


Twist of Fate

by alexthegayzebra



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Language, M/M, Romance, Spoilers Through Chapter 340, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-15 18:59:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1315735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexthegayzebra/pseuds/alexthegayzebra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Temari would never send for help unless she really needed it.  So when the Hidden Sand comes under attack by an army of rogue ninja, Temari reaches out to the village's new ally - The Hidden Leaf - and requests reinforcements.  Tsunade, of course, sends the ninja Temari least wanted to see - Shikamaru (and friends).  Although, if she's honest with herself, did she really expect anything else?<br/>Now, what will happen when the two rivals are brought together under the most desperate of circumstances?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reunion

“Sometimes you lose a battle.  But mischief always wins the war.”

—John Green (Looking For Alaska)

* * *

  **Chapter 1: Reunion**

 _I really didn’t want to have to do this_ , Temari thought to herself as she rushed to the Messenger Corp, frantically checking over her shoulder to make sure she’d made a clean getaway.  The ambush had been sudden, and the Hidden Sand was understaffed, as far as shinobi went.  Those damn Akatsuki had reduced the village to a shadow of its former self, taking the lives of countless ninja in their rampage to acquire the Kazekage.

 _No_ , she reminded herself, _not the Kazekage—the Shukaku_ inside _the Kazekage_.  She silently admonished herself for the mistake.  It was not the first time someone had failed to see the distinction between the boy and the monster, but Temari should have known better.  Gaara was her brother, after all.

Upon reaching the base of the Messenger Corp’s tower, she increased her pace.  There was no time to waste.  She zoomed up the stairs two at a time, finally reaching the top. 

“I need a messenger bird, now!” she demanded, causing the two ninja in the room to spring from their chairs, suddenly alert. 

“Of course, Lady Temari,” said the one closest to her.  “But what for?”

“There’s been an attack on the outer wall by a group of rogues.  We’re handling things the best we can, but we need help.  We’re too shorthanded,” she explained as the Messenger Ninja unfurled a scroll on the table in front of him. 

“What should I write?”

“Attack on Hidden Sand.  Assistance needed immediately.”

“To whom?”

“The Hidden Leaf.”

The Messenger Ninja looked up in surprise.  “Lady Temari, don’t you think we should consult Lord Kazekage before enlisting the help of another village?”

“He approves,” came a raspy voice from behind them.

Temari and the two Messenger Ninja jerked their heads around so fast it was surprising they didn’t injure themselves.  And there in the doorway was her brother—the red hair, the calm expression, the sunken eyes, the flowing robes.  The only bit of serenity in the chaos that had struck the Hidden Sand. 

“Gaara!” Temari exclaimed.  “You agree then?”

“Of course.  We are allies; it’s expected that we turn to each other in times of crisis.  Send the message.  In the meantime, I will assist in the battle.”

“But Gaara, you’re the Kazekage—we have to keep you safe!”

“What good is a Kazekage who doesn’t defend his own village?”

Temari looked at her brother and thought about how much he’d changed in the past few years—no, how the Leaf had changed him.  That Naruto boy had struck something in Gaara, something life-altering and terrifying, but something good.  It was that boy who had allowed Gaara, at the age of 16, to become the best Kazekage the Hidden Sand had ever seen. 

She smiled sadly at her brother.  Would he ever stop trying to prove himself worthy of his title? 

“I’m sorry, Gaara, but what’s best for the village is keeping you safe.  Your Ultimate Defense has been beaten before and that’s not something I’m prepared to risk.”

“But—”

“No, Gaara!” she interjected.  “I’m saying this as your big sister, not just as a comrade: You’re going to wait this out right here, where it’s safe.  You’ve already died for your village once, and I am _not_ gonna let that happen again,” she concluded, turning slowly to face the Messenger Ninja once again.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gaara bow his head in defeat, somehow, despite his undying loyalty to the people of his village, knowing that Temari was right.

With that, she left for the battleground.  She exited the building, once again feeling the intense morning sunshine on her skin.  As she ran, she heard the sharp squawk of a hawk and she knew her message was on its way.  She felt an ironic grin stretch across her face because, somewhere in the back of her mind, she had a feeling she knew who the Hokage was going to send.

And she knew he was _not_ going to like it.

* * *

 “Why the hell do _I_ have to go the Hidden Sand?  That’s such a _pain_.”

Tsunade sighed.  This was not going the way she’d wanted, although it was exactly what she’d expected.  “Because, Shikamaru, you are the only available Chunin Captain that has any sort of relationship with the village.”

Shikamaru shoved his fists deeper into his pockets, staring at the ground with an intensity that could burn holes.  “Yeah, but can’t you send another squad?  I know Konohamaru’s been begging you for an A-Rank for months.”

“He and the rest of Team Ebisu are on an escort mission right now.  Shikamaru, you’re going.  No questions asked.”

“Ah…” he sighed.  He knew he’d promised himself not to complain as much as he used to, but he couldn’t resist—this mission just sounded like such a drag.  Going to the Hidden Sand meant seeing that kunoichi.  Temari.  The cruelest of them all.  Apparently Tsunade had mistaken their grudging acquaintance during that year’s Chunin Exams as actual friendship, based on her comment about a ‘relationship,’ but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  To be honest, they hated each other.  She’d never quite gotten past how he’d humiliated her in their own Chunin Exams, and he’d never quite forgiven her for saving him from the Sound Ninja.  Or for the ceaseless insults.  Or for just generally reminding him of his mother.  She wasn’t horrible all the time, but if he had to put a number on it, he’d say she was a pain about 70% of the time.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.  He didn’t want to get out of this mission just because of some troublesome woman.  He just wasn’t sure he was up to another mission so soon.  It’d only been about a month since he’d gone up against those Akasuki, Hidan and Kakuzu, and although the bruises had faded and the cuts had scarred over, there were some wounds that were much slower healing.  Shikamaru felt his expression darken as a wave of regret crashed over him.

Asuma.  No matter how many times Shikamaru thought about it, he could never get past it. His sensei was dead.  He was out of a shogi partner and a friend.  And as much as he didn’t want to believe it, it was partially his fault.  If he’d just been a little more careful in his calculations, if he’d foreseen all the possible outcomes, a senseless death could have been avoided.  If he’d just figured out Hidan’s jutsu quicker…

He shook his head.  It was too late to do anything about it, and he needed to think about his other responsibilities.  Asuma had entrusted him with the Will of Fire, and he intended to uphold that trust.  He would watch over Kurenai and her baby, once she had it, and he would protect his comrades.  Which, he supposed, included their allies in the Sand Village.

Tsunade, seeing Shikamaru drift into his own thoughts, had a feeling she knew what was bothering him.  “Are you thinking about Asuma again?”

Shikamaru didn’t reply.  He simply curled his hands into ever tighter fists and shoved them even deeper into his pockets, looking anywhere but at the Hokage.

“Ah…Shikamaru, how many times to I have to tell you that it wasn’t your fault?”

“But—”

“No, Shikamaru, no buts,” she shouted, suddenly rising out of her seat.  She slammed her hands down onto her desk, her brown eyes alighting in a burst of rage.  “I’m sick of this!  You can’t doubt yourself—you’re a shinobi!  It’s your job to protect your comrades and how do you intend to do that if you don’t think you’re good enough?”

Shikamaru felt anger spread red-hot through his body as he unconsciously moved forward to stand face-to-face with Tsunade.  “Asuma is dead because of me!  I’m a failure!  I’ve lost Sasuke!  I’ve hurt Choji!  And Naruto!  And Neji and Kiba and Ino, and it’s all because I’m _not_ good enough!”

“BULLSHIT!”

Shikamaru suddenly snapped out of the rage that had grabbed him and stepped back to a respectable distance.

“I’m sorry, Lady Hokage.  That was out of line.”

“Hm.”  Tsunade took her seat once more, sizing up Shikamaru’s newly calmed face.  “Lemme tell you something.  Shikamaru, you are the best strategist the Hidden Leaf has ever seen, except for maybe your father and you'd probably even give _him_ a run for his money.  If it weren’t for you, I don’t even want to think of what the state of the village would be in.  So yes, Asuma is dead.  But so are two Akatsuki and 5 of Orochimaru’s followers.  And your friends _aren’t_.  If you would just stop lingering on your mistakes, you’d be able to see how much good you’ve done.”

Shikamaru took all this without the slightest change in expression, but he felt a newfound resolve.  He would take this mission, and it would go perfectly.

“I accept the mission, Lady Hokage.”

Tsunade smiled.  “Excellent.  Who do you need for your team?”

“What information do we have on the enemy?”

Tsunade glanced at the scroll on her desk.  “Nothing.  It just says, _Attack on Hidden Sand.  Assistance needed immediately_.  But they wouldn’t send for help unless they were either seriously out-classed or seriously out-numbered.”

Shikamaru took a moment to think.  With such limited information, he’d just have to form a squad with members who could counter a lot of different combat styles.  He took care of mid-range, so he’d need a close-range (maybe two for good measure), a long-range, a sensory type, and a way to get there quickly.  He wouldn’t need a medical ninja, since the Sand had their own…but who to bring?

“Is Neji on a mission?”

“Yes.  He and the rest of Team Guy are in the Land of Rice Paddies.”

“Hm…”  That was a minor setback, but nothing he couldn’t handle.  “In that case, I need Choji, Naruto, Sai, and Hinata.”

Tsunade made a few notes in her mission files and nodded in affirmation.  “All right.  Gather your team—you leave immediately.”

* * *

 Temari felt a sharp gust of wind as a shuriken flew past her left ear. 

“Watch it, Temari!” shouted Kankuro, expertly maneuvering Black Ant to capture the enemy nin who’d attacked his sister.  “Get your head out of the clouds!”

Even as she regained her focus, angling her fan for her next attack, she felt a stupid smile stretch across her face.  Clouds.  Shikamaru loved the clouds.  She was glad Shikamaru hadn’t been there to see that little blunder—he’d never let her hear the end of it if she screwed up—but at the same time, she hoped he was close.  The situation was becoming ever direr.  The Sand nin had suffered several casualties already, and although she was sure the rogues had lost more men than her troops had, there seemed to be a never-ending supply of them ready to take the places of their fallen comrades.  They needed all the help they could get.

She tilted her fan, sizing up the angle of her next shot.  She tensed her muscles, relishing the ache in her shoulders.

“Wind Style, Wind Scythe Jutsu!” she screamed, swinging her fan.

The volley of wind sliced through the frontlines of the enemy forces, sending eight men crumbling to the sandy ground in a collective spurt of red.

She allowed herself a brief feeling of smugness before ten men stepped forward to take their places.  She reached for her shuriken.

“You better get here soon, Nara,” she muttered before unleashing another attack.

* * *

 “How come I have to be here?  I should be _training_.  What if Pervy Sage gets back while I’m on a mission?” Naruto whined.

He, Choji, Sai, Hinata, and Shikamaru were all currently flying into the sunset over a particularly barren stretch of desert, courtesy of Sai’s ink birds.  Shikamaru wagered they were about three quarters of the way to the Hidden Sand, which was rather impressive considering they’d only left that morning and it took three days to get there on foot.  Bringing Sai had certainly been a good move on his part, even if he couldn’t be completely trusted.  The Foundation was simply too suspicious to give Sai a free pass, but try as Shikamaru might, he couldn’t bring himself to hate Sai.  Something about his demeanor, his never-ceasing desire to understand the most basic aspects of human relationships, made him seem almost like a small child, someone the village had to take care of. 

Shikamaru bared his face to the biting wind, snapping himself out of his thoughts.  There were more important things to worry about, just then.  He opened his mouth to respond to Naruto’s asinine comment, but Choji beat him to it.

“Because, idiot, Shikamaru needs close-range fighters and you fit the bill.  Besides, even if Master Jiraiya gets back while you’re gone, you know the only training you’ll get done is peeping at hot springs.”

“Hey!  That is _very useful_ _stealth training_!” Naruto backfired.

Shikamaru felt a small grin creeping across his face.  He and Choji had been best friends for as long as he could remember, but the fact that they understood each other without even looking at each other still amazed him.  They were, along with Ino, the perfect team.  Asuma had seen to that.

And just like that, the grin was gone.

“Naruto, do you need me to explain the plan to you _again_?” Shikamaru asked.

Naruto gaped.  “We have a plan?”

Shikamaru, for lack of a better word, facepalmed.  “Yes!” He yelled.  Naruto was great to have in fights and all, and Shikamaru liked the guy, but he really was a pain sometimes.

“Naruto, listen up.  Sai is at point so that he can use his ink creatures to scout ahead for potential enemies, and so that he can tell his birds where to go.  Plus, he’s a long-range fighter, so in the event that he spots an enemy, he’s the best situated to dispose of the threat.  You and Choji are next because you’re the close-range fighters, and in case we get dragged into a conflict, you two are placed so that you can get close to the enemy quickly.  Then there’s me, since I’m a mid-range fighter, and then Hinata’s in the back to scan behind us with her Byakugan and take care of anyone tailing us,” Shikamaru explained, all the while thinking that it would have been much better to have Neji with the team, because at least _he_ wouldn’t spend the whole mission worrying about impressing Naruto.  But hey, sometimes you just have to count your losses and move on.  “But we want to avoid a fight at all costs,” he continued.  “Our one and only goal at this point is to reach the Hidden Sand safely and rendezvous with the Kazekage to figure out what we’re up against.  You got that?”

“You mean we’re not even _fighting_?  Man, this mission totally stinks!”

“Gah…” Shikamaru groaned.  He gave up.  He simply could not tolerate having to explain this most simplistic of strategies any more.  The ninjas flew on in silence.

Sai, peering ahead, suddenly perked up.  “I can see the outer wall!  We’re nearly there!” he called back to the rest of the group. 

“Excellent.”  Shikamaru grinned.  Finally, a mission without complications.

Or so he thought.  As soon as the word left his mouth, he started to get an uneasy feeling in his stomach, and soon after his instincts registered something amiss, he heard Hinata gasp.

“Shikamaru!” she shrieked.

“What’d you see, Hinata?”

“Enemies!”

“Tailing us?”

“No—above!”

“Above?” he asked, turning his gaze skyward.  “But we’re flying.  How could they—”

And then he saw them.  Two ninja boasting headbands from the Hidden Stone, seemingly floating along unsupported.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.  He thought he’d dealt with everything—elaborate genjutsus, immortal freaks—but he’d never even imagined that he’d encounter a ninja with the ability to fly.  There were stories dating back to the First Great Shinobi War about the existence of such powers, but those were children’s stories, told to scare the newbies at the academy.  Surely they couldn’t be _real_.

Shikamaru shook his head to clear it, silently admonishing himself for his moment of discomposure.  He couldn’t bother with the how yet; his first priority was thinking about the what.  There were flying ninja watching them like hawks.  What now?  They weren’t attacking, but then if they weren’t aiming to intercept, what was their purpose?  Clearly they were a diversion, and if they were drawing attention skyward…

“Watch out!” Shikamaru shouted as four ninja appeared suddenly beneath them, sending a volley of kunai toting paper bombs flying toward the Leaf Ninja.  They dodged frantically, miraculously managing to avoid the weapons. 

Shikamaru glanced around, trying to assess the situation.  They were now within half a mile of the Hidden Sand; they, a group of five, were being pursued by six enemy ninja of unknown ability; there was no tree cover.  That meant they were too far away to seek refuge in the village, they were outnumbered and, as the enemy had somehow managed to avoid detection by the Byakugan, the all-but-infallible ocular jutsu, likely out-skilled.  And there was no chance of hiding.  No matter how he looked at it, he knew they would have to fight.  They were trapped. 

“Sai!” He called out.

“Captain!” Sai shouted, scribbling furiously on a scroll even as he flew.

“Control my bird for a minute!  Naruto!  Choji!  Cover me, ok?  Hinata, you keep gathering any intel you can.”

His comrades nodded gravely.

Shikamaru crouched into a familiar stance, one knee touching the ground, eyes closed, fingertips pressed together.  He needed to think.

He ignored the sounds of tinkling metal and his comrades’ grunts as they battled; all that mattered was the plan. 

_The Plan…the plan…_

Shikamaru straightened slightly from his crouch.  “Hinata,” he called softly, so as the rest of the dueling ninja wouldn’t hear.

“Yes?”

“Can you see the battlefield at the Sand Village?”

“Yes.”

“What’s happening?”

“There are about a hundred rogues and about thirty Sand ninja.  The rogues are closer to us and the Sand ninja seem to be pressed against the outer wall of the village, but I can’t make out specifics—they’re moving too fast.  Why?  What’s the plan, Shikamaru?”

“I’ll tell you when I know myself,” he deadpanned, turning his view downward to examine their assailants below. 

_No tree cover…no intel…vastly outnumbered…I have to think about this a different way.  There’s no way to avoid a fight, but how can I turn this in our—and the Hidden Sand’s—favor?_

He assumed his crouch once more, focusing all his energy on formulating the best possible plan.

_That’s it!_

“Sai!” he called, reaching into his ninja-tool pouch and removing a few kunai.  “Release your jutsu on my count.  We’re going the rest of the way on foot.”

“Understood,” Sai responded stoically.  His face remained blank, but Naruto spun around, suddenly excited.  A lopsided, toothy grin spread across his face.

“All right!” he shouted.  “Finally, some real action!”

Hinata was decidedly less excited.  She raised her hands up to chest level and began twiddling her fingers in her trademark gesture of apprehension.  “Shikamaru, aren’t we safer in the air?”

“Yes,” he responded, carefully securing paper tags to his supply of kunai knives.  “But _they’re_ safer if we’re in the air, too.”

He finished preparing his kunai and finally turned his full attention to his team.  “Listen up, guys.  Once Sai releases the jutsu, we’ll take out these rogues and run for the Hidden Sand as fast as we can.  Clearly, they were alerted at the battlefront that there might be reinforcements coming and these guys were sent out for reconnaissance, but I’d bet the rogues don’t anticipate us winning this fight.  They’ll likely know that the situation in the Leaf is just as dire as in the Sand, and that we wouldn’t be able to send many additional soldiers, so they’ll think that we’re easy targets.  They won’t be expecting us at the main battlefield and we’ll be approaching them from behind, so we have the advantage.  You’ll need to use the element of surprise and take out as many as you can while we have that advantage.  That’s our only chance, given the circumstances.  Got it?”

His team nodded gravely.  “Choji,” said Shikamaru.  “You know what to do.”

Choji smirked and cracked his knuckles, eager for the fight.  “You got it, Shikamaru.”

“Now, Sai!” he yelled, jumping into the air and releasing a volley of paper bombs at their flying followers.  All of a sudden, the birds on which they had been traveling dissolved to ink and the group was sent tumbling back to earth.

Shikamaru was above the others, facing upward so as to see the startled looks on the rogues’ faces when they realized the paper bombs were fakes.  He couldn’t create an explosion, after all.  If he had alerted the enemy to their position, the plan would have been pointless.  Nonetheless, the threat of attack had made them panic, and they’d been unable to stage a counterattack.  Even as Shikamaru watched this part of his plan come to fruition, he heard his best friend shout, “EXPANSION JUTSU!  SPIKY HUMAN BOULDER!”

The four distinct cries of pain assured him that Choji’s attack had done just what it was supposed to do.  He allowed himself a short-lived moment of smugness as Choji reached out one giant hand to catch his friend and return him safely to the ground.  He joined his team in Choji’s shadow and they made to leave, but he heard a soft _pat_ as the rogues touched down, preparing for battle.

Suddenly, however, they found that they could no longer move their bodies.  They both raised their startled eyes to appraise the sixteen-year-old boy in front of them—the ponytail jutting into the sky; the narrowed eyes sparkling with mischief; the thin lips curled nastily in cruel determination; and finally, the slender fingers, weaved into a hand sign. 

“Shadow possession jutsu complete,” Shikamaru practically taunted.  He glanced up at Choji who, had his face not been backlit, would probably have looked rather pleased with himself.  “Good job, buddy.  It’s not easy to find a good shadow in the desert.”

“No problem,” he returned.

Shikamaru brought his gaze back to the two rogues in his grip.  “You guys go on ahead,” he called to his team.  “I’ll finish up here.”

As he heard his comrades’ footfalls fade gradually into the background and he heaved a huge sigh of relief.  His team had conquered the first hurdle unharmed.

He shifted his fingers slightly to deliver the final blow.  “Shadow Strangle Jutsu!” he grunted, struggling with the effort necessary to maintain such a jutsu on two men simultaneously.

The Stone Ninja were stunned.  This man—no, this _child_ —was going to kill them with a mere shadow.  As they saw the black tendrils snaking up their arms and slowly stretching to circle their necks, their hearts raced and their lungs ached.  They couldn’t move.  They couldn’t breathe.  They were dead.

Shikamaru felt their muscles suddenly go slack and he knew it was over.  He released his jutsu, sending the enemy ninja tumbling broken to the ground, and turned to face a rapidly shrinking Choji, who had loyally stayed behind to assist Shikamaru.

“Ready for the real fight?” Shikamaru asked.

“You bet, Shikamaru.”  He and Shikamaru charged into the setting sun, basking in the high of victory, the adrenaline rush.  They were so close to the village’s outer wall now that they could clearly see the battlefield and hear the tinkling of clashing weapons.  Shikamaru felt a surge of familiarity as he picked out the distinct clacking of Kankuro’s puppets and the unmistakable _whoosh_ of Temari’s fan, followed by an indomitable dust cloud billowing into the air, turning the orange sunset a murky gray.  He remembered the first time he’d heard that noise, during the Chunin Exams.  She’d been fighting Tenten, whom Shikamaru had barely known at the time and didn’t have the right to cheer for, and yet at that time the biting wind had seemed so sinister.  And then the last time he’d seen her use that attack, his first mission as a Chunin captain.  When she’d saved him.  It was funny how the wind which had terrified him so deeply for so long had suddenly felt comforting, almost friendly. 

The sounds of battle were growing louder as they got closer, and he was now beginning to be able to pick out voices.  He’d only ever been to the Hidden Sand once, and very briefly at that, but he never forgot a voice, and he recognized many of the ones he was hearing now.  He felt his lips twitch up at the corners ever so slightly as he picked out one in particular.  Her voice was slightly deeper and coarser than those of the girls he knew in the Hidden Leaf.  It was harder, more unforgiving.  Strong.  It was a voice filled with cockiness and superiority, not showing a shred of weakness.  But what Shikamaru heard in her voice now concerned him, for he’d never even imagined she could feel such an emotion: Temari sounded desperate. 

He felt his feet moving faster, almost of their own accord.  They were nearly there. 

“Naruto, Choji, Sai, Hinata!” he whisper-shouted, so as not to alert the enemy. 

“Yes, Captain?” responded Sai.  The others simply turned to look at him. 

“Our entire plan hinges on surprising them, so we have to take out as many of them as we can in one go.  As soon as our initial attack is staged, they’ll start defending themselves, and we have to minimize their defense.  I need you to use your most devastating attacks, but be covert about it.  Naruto, that means you,” he scolded. 

Naruto’s eyebrows wrinkled as his lower lip jutted out.  Just as quickly, his hurt expression vanished.  “No worries, Shikamaru.  I’ve got this,” he boasted, weaving a hand sign as he spoke.  “Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!”

Instantly, their army of five became an army of several hundred.  They were now no more than thirty feet away from the first of the rogues—

“Super Beast Scroll!”

—fifteen feet—

“Twin Lion Fists!”

—five feet—

“Expansion Jutsu!”

—and the fight had begun.

“Spiky Human Boulder!”

“Shadow Stitching!”

“Gentle Fist!”

“Giant Rasengan!”

And just like that, the rogue army was reduced by thirty.  The odds had certainly been turned in their favor, but their advantage had run out.  They may have taken out thirty rogues, but now it was seventy against six and Shikamaru had no idea what they were up against or how many Sand ninja were still alive.  And worse yet, the enemy was moving to surround the band of Leaf Shinobi, making any chance of a getaway vanish into thin air. 

The Leaf nin formed a circle with their backs to the middle, an innate defense maneuver. 

“So what’s the plan now, Captain?” Sai asked. 

“Lemme think,” came Shikamaru’s nervous reply as he watched the oncoming enemy nin pull put kunai with menacing grins on their faces.  He’d assumed that the rogue army would be entirely ex-Stone ninja, but he now saw that there were ex-Mist, ex-Cloud, and even a few headbands he couldn’t recognize in the mix.  With such a diverse army, their odds of success were greatly reduced.

 Shikamaru glanced to his left, at Naruto.  His eyebrows were knitted together in concern.  He glanced to his right, at Hinata.  Her eyes were wide, wider than usual, with the shock of seeing the size of the enemy up close.  He was sure Choji, if not Sai, boasted a similarly disturbed expression.  As for himself, Shikamaru was starting to lose his cool.  He struggled to keep his face neutral, should his friends decide to look at him—he needed to be the level-headed leader, but he just couldn’t see a way out of this.  Their best bet was using Sai’s ink birds to make an escape, but at such a close range, they’d be attacked for sure before they even got off the ground.  Their only option was to fight their way out, but Shikamaru understood his and his friends’ limits perhaps better than anyone.  This was not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination.

“Shikamaru?” Hinata whispered apprehensively.

“Sorry, guys, I’ve got nothing,” Shikamaru admitted.  “We’ll have to somehow fight our way over to the Sand nin, but at least for now, it’s every man for himself.”

* * *

 Temari had been about ready to surrender when she saw it.  At the back of the enemy army, there was a large, spiky ball, systematically throwing skewered rogues into the air.  She allowed herself a moment of relief: Nara was finally here, and he’d brought his chubby friend. 

In that second of distraction, an ex-Cloud ninja had managed to close the gap between himself and Temari, and he sent a shuriken sizzling with Lightning-Style chakra her way.  Temari noticed it just in time, and dodged just enough for it to graze her upper arm, rather than her chest.  Nonetheless, when it made contact with her skin, the electric shock was enough to make her hair, which was already spiky enough as it was, stand on end.  The amount of blood seeping from the wound was minimal, but it sure hurt like hell.

“You son of a bitch!” Temari yelled, simultaneously imbuing her fan with acutely focused Wind-Style chakra and swinging it horizontally at the man, so fast it was little more than a blur.

Before the rogue even had time to think about moving, his severed head had hit the floor.  There was an almost comical spurt of blood from the wound, and then after a few seconds, his body followed suit. 

“Asshole,” Temari panted.  “You got blood on my fan.”

* * *

 Shikamaru’s ears perked up as he heard a certain woman’s blood-curdling shouts.  He felt a shiver travel down his spine without fully understanding why, and he knew innately that Temari needed help.

“Choji, I need you to throw me as hard as you can to three-o’clock,” Shikamaru stated as calmly as he could, given the circumstances.  His comrades had dispersed and were all fighting their own battles, but Choji had stayed by his side, loyal to the end.  They were alternately sweeping enemies out of the way with Choji’s enlarged hands and attacking them with Shikamaru’s shadows, but they weren’t getting very far.  Shikamaru knew that if it weren’t for him, Choji probably would have taken out a ton of them, but the fact of the matter was that Choji was unwilling to abandon his friend, since he knew Shikamaru wasn’t exactly the most talented ninja when it came to Taijutsu.  If Choji could just throw him somewhere a little more strategically viable, then they’d both be better off. 

“Your three-o’clock or my three-o’clock?” 

“Yours.”

“But that’s straight at the wall!”

“I know.  Just do this for me, ok?”

“All right,” Choji hedged.  “Partial Expansion Jutsu!  Just the hand!”

He held out his hand expectantly and Shikamaru leaped into his palm, pulling a few paper bombs out of his pack as he moved. 

“Ready?”

“Go ahead, buddy.”

Choji hurled Shikamaru at the Sand Village’s outer wall with all his strength. 

* * *

  _This fight is getting hairy_ , Temari thought.  The enemy shinobi were closing in, and she could no longer use her Wind Scythe Jutsu for fear of catching one of the Leaf Nin in the crosshairs.  Naturally, she had milder attacks that she could use, but what was the point of wasting chakra on an attack that wouldn’t even kill the target?  _I mean, honestly_.

Suddenly, she felt a sharp breeze as something flew over her head.  She whipped around just in time to see a ninja’s feet come falling into view, and she felt her vision blur with bloodlust as she reached for a kunai.  She would go for the throat, she would destroy him, she would—

“Temari, it’s me!” came a panicked voice.  Temari knew that voice.  Her vision cleared, and before her stood the boy she’d been anticipating for nearly eight hours now.  She’d been waiting for him desperately all day, and she’d nearly killed him.  _Fuck._  

“Shit, Nara,” she gasped.  She didn’t remember her grip on the kunai becoming so tight, but her knuckles were white and she had to really focus to relax her joints.  “A little warning next time, maybe?”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’ll really be the first thing on my mind in the middle of coming to rescue y—LOOK OUT!” he shouted, sending a shuriken flying straight at her face.

Temari barely ducked in time, but thankfully the shuriken embedded itself in a Mist Nin’s skull rather than her own.  Temari couldn’t believe it—she hadn’t even noticed him.  He’d been less than three feet from her, and she hadn’t even known he was there. 

Temari decided it was probably a good idea to turn her gaze back to the enemy, but before she had a chance, Shikamaru had grabbed her hand and was pulling her toward the wall.  “This way!” he panted. 

She couldn’t believe this boy—this boy who was supposed to be some sort of tactical _genius_ —was turning his back to the battlefield, but she really had no choice but to go along with him.  That grip of his was vice-like.  Miraculously, it seemed like they weren’t being pursued.  She didn’t hear any footsteps behind them, anyway, but she did hear a faint clicking as Kankuro maneuvered his Salamander puppet to cover their retreat.  _Thanks, little bro_ , she thought.  _I owe you one_.

She fully expected to stop at the base of the wall, but Shikamaru just kept going.  He didn’t even slow as he began his ascent up the wall, and she followed him, struggling to keep up.  There weren’t many surfaces to scale in the desert, and Temari hadn’t left the village in quite a long time.  That being said, she was a little out of practice with the whole defying-the-laws-of-physics thing, but, hey, at least she didn’t fall.  They climbed to an impossible height of forty meters or so, and finally Shikamaru halted and turned to face the ground. 

“You ready?” he asked, a hint of excitement sneaking into his voice.

Temari tentatively pivoted so that she could see the battle raging beneath them.  She could see the entire rogue army from up here, as well as all the Leaf Nin.  They stood out, bursts of color in a mundane sea of gray.  They were all still at the outer edge of the battle, but she could see Nara’s chubby friend knocking people aside right and left.  She could see a slight, somewhat unhealthily pale boy fighting alongside a magnificent black-and-white lion.  She could see a black-haired girl with glowing blue fists sending men twice her size flying to the other side of the battlefield.  And she could see about fifty orange-and-yellow blurs that could only be Naruto.  The rest of the rogues were concentrating their forces closer to the wall.  She couldn’t for the life of her imagine what Nara had planned, but clearly he had something up his sleeve.  “Ready for what?”

“You’ll see,” he responded.  God, she could practically  _hear_  him smirking.

She heard a faint brushing sound that must have been Shikamaru forming a hand sign, and then something amazing happened.     

* * *

 The explosions themselves were beautiful, even if the aftereffects made him a bit sick to his stomach.  As Shikamaru had hurtled toward the Hidden Sand’s wall, he’d been planning.  He knew that the army would have divided to fend against the new dual threat, but finding the line marking the schism had been harder than he’d suspected.  Finally, though, he’d spotted it—the enemy’s one blind spot, the small spit of land between the half of the army focused on the Sand Nin and the half focused on the Leaf Nin.  Shikamaru threw three paper bombs into that space, making sure that they were far enough away from all his allies for when he would ultimately set them off.  They had gone unnoticed.

And now, the battlefield was ablaze.  He saw the shinobi nearest the paper bombs engulfed in flames, and still others blasted off their feet by the wall of sand sent flying by the shock wave.  He saw chunks of singed flesh rain down on his still-battling comrades, but by the looks of things, they’d been unharmed by the blast. 

 _Thank goodness_ , he thought as a layer of smoke moved to block his view.  If any of his friends had been injured by the blast, he’d never have been able to live with himself.  He may have been projecting confidence for Temari’s benefit, but when it came right down to it, he was scared out of his mind.

So many things could have gone wrong with that plan.  _So many things_.  But now the enemy troops had been almost divided in half and the armies had been all but evened out. 

 _The odds are finally turning in our favor_ , he thought as he turned to face Temari.  He knew there was a stupid, relieved grin slapped across his face, but he couldn’t help it. 

“It worked,” he whispered when he saw a similar grin on her face.  They locked eyes and laughed in amazement as the adrenaline coursed through their systems. 

Shikamaru was so happy, in fact, that he didn’t even notice the volley of Lightning Chakra-imbued shuriken that came flying out of the smoke.  Most of them were poorly aimed and fell short, but one hit Shikamaru in the small of his back, just missing the base of his spine, and one hit his right shoulder, sinking through his flesh and stopping only after it nicked the bone. 

A jolt of powerful electricity coursed through his body, knocking him out with the pain.  Unconscious, he began the long fall toward Earth.

* * *

 Temari had been facing the right direction when the shuriken had come flying out of the smoke, so thankfully, she had managed to evade the few that had come her way.  She was also facing the right direction to see Shikamaru plummet past her at an impossible speed, tumbling head-over-heels to certain death.

“Shikamaru!” she screeched, launching herself of the wall before she had a chance to think through what she was doing.  She fell about ten meters before she was engulfed in smoke, and despite the horrible burning sensation, she forced her eyes to stay open and began searching for Shikamaru. 

 _Damn, this smoke is thick_ , she thought.  She couldn’t see a thing.  _Why the hell am I so stupid?_ she asked herself.  _I just jumped off a fucking cliff.  I jumped off a cliff to save some idiot I don’t even like, and now we’re both gonna die.  Good going, Temari.  Moron._

She was snapped out of her thoughts as something hot and wet splattered onto her cheek.  She lifted a hand to feel it, and it was definitely blood, most likely Nara’s blood. 

 _Yes!_ Temari celebrated inwardly.  _He’s right below me!_

She streamlined her body, hoping that the minimal air resistance would bring her closer to him, and much to her surprise, it worked.  Shikamaru quickly came into view, and she was soon level with him.  She wrapped her left arm around him ( _Damn, Nara’s skinny_ ) and frantically unfurled her fan beneath them with her right.  She had no idea how long it had been since she’d jumped—time seemed to work differently when you were falling—but she knew the ground couldn’t be far off.  She willed all her remaining chakra into her fan, praying to whatever worldly forces happened to be listening that they’d just float gracefully to the ground and not wind up as bloody skid-marks on the sand.

For a couple seconds, she thought it would work, she really did.  But then the ground came rushing up at them and they were sent flying when the fan’s handle buried itself in the sand.  Temari kept a tight hold on Shikamaru as they rolled to a stop, not willing to lose him in the smoke again.  Back on the ground, Temari could hear anew the sounds of battle, and much to her surprise, they’d intensified, if anything.  The enemy’s numbers had been so drastically reduced that she’d assumed the battle would be won easily, but evidently she was wrong.  The tinkling noise of metal-on-metal came much more frequently than it had before, as did the cries of pain. 

After taking a moment to orient herself, she took Shikamaru’s limp body and rolled him onto his front to examine the wounds.  She cringed as she saw how deeply the shuriken had penetrated, and felt sick to her stomach at the horrible slurping noise they made as she removed them.  She eyed the wounds and decided that they weren’t life-threatening.  They’d missed any major arteries and organs, and he wasn’t going to bleed to death, but she needed to get him somewhere safe until he woke up.  She looked around for her fan and saw its outline about ten feet away.  She dragged Shikamaru over to it, hoping desperately that the sand wouldn’t infect the wounds too badly before she could get him to the hospital.  Coughing pathetically, she finally reached her fan and wrenched it from the ground.  It was torn slightly, and dented in more than a few places, but overall, it was in fairly good condition, considering the force of the landing.  She trudged about five more yards before reaching the wall and gratefully leant Shikamaru against it.  She hefted her fan in her hands, grimacing at the burn she felt in her muscles, and sent a single powerful gust of wind across the battlefield.  She was completely out of chakra, so the wind wasn’t enough to hurt anybody, but it was plenty to clear the smoke. 

When the smoke was gone, she instantly wished it wasn’t.  What she was seeing was enough to make any sane person crazy, but she was a ninja, so she was anything but sane. 

Her allies were down. 

All of them.

She saw Kankuro pressing one hand to a gash in his thigh and using the last of his chakra to inexpertly maneuver Salamander in front of his wounded comrades.

She saw an exhausted and bruised Naruto leaning over the black-haired girl, whose right leg was bent at a sickening ankle.

She saw the pale boy lying face-down in the sand.

She saw the chubby boy crying freely, clutching his wrist close to his chest.

She saw all of her comrades, each more pitiful than the last, and she knew it was over.  They’d lost.  The rogues were moving slowly now, reveling in their victory.  The twenty or so that remained were advancing on the fallen shinobi, eagerly anticipating the final blow.

But then the sun fell below the horizon and the rogues, as if they’d choreographed it ahead of time, all looked up at something above Temari’s head.  Their eyes widened in fear.  They forgot completely about their bloodlust.  They turned on their heels and ran as fast as they could into the desert.

 _What the hell?_ Temari wondered.  She looked up, but couldn’t see anything in the weak moonlight.  And then she saw it.

A huge mass of sand was seething over the wall, and atop it, silhouetted dramatically, stood Gaara. 

She couldn’t remember ever being happier to see that her little brother had disobeyed her orders.

He floated past the wall, past the Sand Nin, past the Leaf Nin, out into the desert.  The rogue army was little more than a speck in the distance, but Gaara was never one to let an adversary walk away unscathed.  Temari saw him raise his hands in front of him, imagining more than hearing the words, “Giant Sand Burial!” escaping his lips. 

Suddenly, the desert came alive, opening its gaping maw, swallowing the rogues whole. 

Temari let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding as she felt the relief spread like a drug throughout her body.  If she’d had any energy left, she would have cheered, but as it was, she was content simply to pump her fist in the air. 

 _We won_ , she thought to herself, and as improbable as it seemed, they had.  But looking down at Shikamaru’s shallowly breathing frame, she found herself wondering what exactly they’d won, and if it was worth everything they’d lost. 

 _Now’s not the time_ , she thought as she hauled herself to her feet, not remembering when exactly she’d fallen.  _Right now, there’s work to be done_.


	2. The Aftermath

“I realize the screaming pain / Hearing loud in my brain / But I’m going straight ahead with this scar.”

—Sign (FLOW)

* * *

 

**Chapter 2: The Aftermath**

The first thing Shikamaru noticed when he awoke was that it was the middle of the night.  Then he realized several things simultaneously: he was moving, he was inside the Hidden Sand’s outer wall, and he was in a tremendous amount of pain.

“Oh good, you’re conscious,” he heard.  The voice echoed strangely inside his skull, banging around and not really making any sense.  He tried to turn his head to find the source of the noise, but _damn_ it hurt to move. 

“Wha—” he broke off, unwilling to let his voice shake as he cringed.  He decided it would be a better idea to simply let his eyes roam, and he glanced around frantically until his sights landed on a familiar figure nearby.  He was still bleary-eyed and on the brink of unconsciousness, but there was no way he could mistake that hair.

“’Mari.  Wha’ happ’ned?”  He was dismayed to hear the slur in his words, to feel the heaviness in his tongue.  He couldn’t stand sounding weak, no matter how extenuating the circumstances.

“You almost got your stupid ass killed.  _That’s_ what happened,” she responded hotly.

The disapproval in her voice weighed down on him and made his head hurt even more than he’d thought possible, but he persevered.  There were things he needed to know.

“Di’ we win?”

“Yes, Nara.  We won.  Any more questions?”

“How’s ev’ryone else?  How’re my frien’s?”

It was probably just the droopy-eyed state he was in, but Temari’s eyes started to look especially sparkly in the moon’s lazy glow.  She turned her head away from him, and he could have sworn that he heard her voice waver when she finally answered.

“Not good, Nara.  Not good.”

* * *

 Temari would have slapped herself if she’d had the energy.  Of all times to start crying, this was one of the worst she could imagine.  If Shikamaru were a little more aware of his surroundings at present, she was sure he’d be mocking her, just as she’d done to him in the past.

Or maybe that was thinking too much of him.  More likely, he’d have cried right alongside her.

But there was no point in speculating; there were much more important things to worry about.  She found herself dragged into her own thoughts by Shikamaru’s question.  She didn’t want to think about how their comrades were doing, but she couldn’t keep the images of the past few hours from playing on an endless loop.

It had taken longer than Temari had assumed it would to move all the casualties.  There was only a small handful of ninja who were in good enough condition to help, so the process of transporting all the wounded shinobi to the hospital was laborious and slow-going.  A couple of Sand Nin had staggered off to fetch the Medical Ninja, and a bunch of stretchers had been brought to the battlefield, but the fact remained that there simply weren’t enough stretchers, or able-bodied people, in the village to really make much of a difference.

Gaara, in a stroke of genius, had finally had the idea to use his sand as makeshift gurneys, but he could still only safely transport seven or eight casualties at a time.  The ones with critical wounds were transported first, and the second wave included all the ones with major bleeding, like Kankuro, and the ones with broken bones.  Temari picked out most of the Leaf Nin in that group.  It wasn’t until the last group, the one with the most superficial injuries, had moved out, that Temari had finally felt a bit of her burden lift from her shoulders.  The worst was over—all that remained now was somehow managing to heal all of them. 

She really wished she’d listened more closely when Granny Chiyo had tried to give her an intro to Medical Ninjutsu.  It was a tradition in the Hidden Sand for all the kunoichi to be trained in basic Medical techniques, but the fact remained that Temari was far better at cutting things up than she was at putting them back together again. 

But this was no time to dwell on her shortcomings; she just had to do what little she could to help her village at present.  She raised her arm so that she could wipe her teary eyes on her sleeve, and she desperately hoped it would just look like she was wiping the sweat off her brow.  She hated outward signs of weakness, especially in herself.  Thinking she’d given herself enough time to recover from her sudden onslaught of emotion, she turned her gaze back to Shikamaru and feared that she would tear up again when she saw his face.  His brow was furrowed in pain, but his gaze was far away, as if he weren’t even aware of himself.  Temari realized rather suddenly that the pain she saw in him was not his own, or at least it wasn’t from his wounds.  She realized that he was worried about his friends more than he was worried about himself.  She realized that, even after saving her village from an army of rogue ninja, that he felt no pride, or even joy.  That look on his face gave nothing away but sadness and fear.

“’ow bad?” he croaked. 

“I don’t know, Nara.  They’re all at the hospital, and they were in pretty bad shape, but I think they’ll all pull through.  You know them better than I do, but given the Leaf Shinobi I know, I’d bet my life they’ll be fine.”

If she’d thought that would appease him in the slightest, she was sorely disappointed.  She saw a slight shift in his facial muscles; where there had been sadness there was now cold determination. 

“Help me up, ‘Mari,” he mumbled in a detached voice she’d never heard him use before. 

“Huh?”

“Help me up.  I wanna walk.”

She thought of the last time she’d seen him this shaken up, after his first mission as a Chunin Captain.  She remembered how distraught he’d been when he’d discovered the extent of his friends’ injuries, how useless he’d felt pacing the hospital waiting room.  She could certainly understand why he would feel the need to walk the rest of the way—at least then he’d feel as though he was doing _something_.

“Okay, Nara,” she conceded.  “Gaara!” she called.  Her brother tilted his head in her direction and she saw that his red hair was hanging in wet clumps, and that his forehead was wrinkled in concentration and sparkling with sweat.  His hands were raised commandingly in front of him, ensuring the security of the casualties currently riding on his sand.  He didn’t say anything in acknowledgement to Temari’s shouts—he couldn’t afford the energy—but she knew he was listening.  “Will you let Nara down?”

He grunted in response, and with a slow, gentle rotation of his right hand, the sand beneath Shikamaru began to give way and he was tilted gradually until his feet grazed the Earth.  Shikamaru took his first tentative step, and Temari saw his knees buckle slightly from the pain he surely felt, but he locked his jaw, endured, and began to walk.

The only problem was that he was walking away from the hospital.

* * *

He had never felt such pain.  Whatever that Lightning Chakra had done to him, he sincerely hoped it would wear off soon, because this was a serious drag.  With each step, every muscle in his body felt as if they were being attacked by thousands of malicious needles.  The tiny, pinpricked resonant pain of the electric shock was crippling.  And yet, he forced himself to move faster, faster, as he made a futile attempt to run away from his conscience. 

_You got your friends hurt again_ , egged the little voice in his head.  _Again…_

And still his feet moved faster, left right left right left right left right, and the pounding in his chest was starting to drown out that evil voice, and then out of nowhere he felt a hand on his shoulder.  Fortunately, it was his unwounded shoulder, but when every cell in one’s body is on fire, it doesn’t really matter which ones show obvious signs of damage.

“Where are you going?!” Temari’s voice screeched shrilly.  He wasn’t sure if her voice had actually risen to such a high octave or if it was just his brain still struggling to leave its half-awake state, but at any rate, now his ears hurt too.  He didn’t stop walking.

“Away,” he replied evasively, as he didn’t really have an answer.

“What?  No, Shikamaru, you’re hurt.  We have to take you to the hosp—”

“No,” he interrupted as he imagined his friends’ bodies splayed out in the sand, broken and blood-streaked.  “Let the hospital take care o’ the people who really need ‘elp.  I’m fine.”

“But Nara—”

“I said I’m fine!” he yelled as he screeched to a halt.  He whipped around to face Temari ( _OWWWWWWW_ , screamed the voice in his head), and he immediately regretted it.  Her cherubic face had contorted into a frightening mixture of concern and anger, and both emotions were making brutal plays for dominance as their battle raged across her face.  One second, Temari’s eyes would narrow, her nostrils would flare, her jaw would make a hard line; the next second, everything would relax.  Finally, though, concern won out.

“Nara…” she began warily.  “Don’t make a stupid mistake just because you’re worried about your friends.  I know how you get in situations like this, and I don’t want you to wind up hurting yourself.”

Shikamaru chuckled cynically.  “I’m Shikaku Nara’s son,” he deadpanned.  “I wasn’t raised to make stupid mistakes.” 

With that, he turned on his heel and began to walk away once more.  Thankfully, the simple act of moving was beginning to ease some of the agony in his muscles; he was no longer in such Earth-shattering pain that he was slurring horribly or limping.  There remained, though, the small problem that he had no idea where he was going. 

* * *

 Temari was having none of this.  “But someone has to stitch up your wounds!  They’ll get infected if nobody looks at them, and—”

“You can sew, can’t you?” he demanded, stopping and rotating slightly, peering at her over his shoulder.

“Well, yeah, kind of…”

“Then you can do it.”

Temari, dumbfounded, averted her gaze.  Her?  Heal somebody?  She would have burst out laughing, had it not been for the expression on Shikamaru’s face.  He was dead serious—he had no intention whatsoever of going to the hospital.  She still thought it was a stupid idea, but she had to sympathize with him on some level.  After all, he, as a captain, had been unable to protect his friends, and as a result, they had all been seriously injured. 

If she really thought about it, though, she supposed it was all sort of her fault for asking them to come in the first place, but she didn’t think she’d be pointing that out to him anytime soon.

Or ever.

She heaved a sigh of resignation and raised her eyes to meet his once more.  “All right,” she agreed, “but you can’t blame me when you wind up with some sort of hideous scar.”

She could have sworn she saw the corners of his mouth twitch at that, but it was probably just her imagination.  “Oh, I’m not worried,” he replied.  “I’m in good hands.”

* * *

  _Why the hell did you say that?_ demanded the little voice in Shikamaru’s head.  _Are you stupid?  This bitch is crazy._

He remembered the moment of the battle where she had nearly killed him in a fit of disorientation and bloodlust.  She really was crazy—a warrior through and through.  But then he remembered the way her eyes had softened around the edges when she had been talking to Gaara and when she had looked down at him on the sand gurney.

He realized that he was probably in good hands after all.  Temari may not have liked to look it, but she cared a great deal.  Maybe she wasn’t the cold-blooded, cruel kunoichi he’d made her out to be.

Shikamaru felt himself relax visibly, much of the pent-up tension leaving his muscles all in one exhale.  He felt almost back to normal, the only real pain left was in his shoulder and his lower back, where he assumed the shuriken had penetrated.  If he thought about it honestly, he had walked away with very minimal injuries, given the intensity of the battle, and once they were stitched up, he’d be back to one-hundred-percent in no time.  He shifted his stance slightly, balancing on his left leg and twisting the ball of his right foot into the sand beneath him, and flashed Temari a genuine smile.

“I trust you,” he confessed.  “Really.”

With that, he pivoted and started to walk away again.

“Nara,” Temari began hesitantly.

“Yeah?” he called over his shoulder, barely slowing his pace.

“Where are you going?”

Shikamaru halted abruptly.  “Didn’t you ask that already?” he asked.

“No, I mean that you’re going the wrong way.”

Shikamaru turned to face her again.  “Oh yeah?”

Temari’s mouth curled into a tentative smirk as she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, pointing toward the center of the village.  “My house is that way.”

_What a troublesome woman,_ went his inner voice.  Shikamaru shook his head in a vain attempt to dislodge the annoying whispers, shrugging as if he were unfazed by his mistake.  “Lead the way,” he sighed, falling into place behind her. 

* * *

  _I wish the lighting were better_ , thought Temari as she looked down at Shikamaru’s back.  It had been about twenty minutes since they’d arrived at the Hidden Sand’s headquarters building and made their way up to the apartment Temari shared with her brothers.  The apartment was neither particularly large nor particularly homey, as none of the three siblings spent a great deal of time there aside from sleeping, but it was home nonetheless.  Temari’s room shot off from the space that served as a sitting room, a dining room, and a kitchen, and it was easily the smallest bedroom in the apartment.  When she’d asked Kankuro how she’d wound up with the smallest bedroom, he’d told her that he needed all the space he could get to store his puppets, and _Gaara’s the fucking_ Kazekage.  _The Kazekage can’t have a tiny bedroom—that’s demoralizing_.  Actually, the apartment’s only redeeming quality was the fact that it had a small balcony overlooking the city.

But in any case, her bedroom was small—there was just enough room for a Queen-size bed, if she neglected herself the luxury of floor space, and she was still able to open the door to her closet (barely).  Aside from her bed, the only piece of furniture was a thin bedside table housing a lone lamp.  The lack of light had never bothered her before—in the desert, during the day at least, there was certainly no one lacking for sunlight, and at night, if she had any work to catch up on, the lamp provided plenty of illumination by which to read, but stitching up a wound was a different story entirely, as she was finding out.

It had been difficult to even reach the wounds, let alone fix them.  Shikamaru wore a surprising amount of layers.  She’d had to carefully remove his vest, followed by his long-sleeved shirt.  Well, those had been simple enough, but then beneath those there was the fishnet. 

Temari was no stranger to fishnet.  She wore it under most of her outfits; it was good at keeping things in place.  But it was also very quick to attach itself to any blood that happened to be drying in the vicinity, and once it latches onto dried blood, it’s about as easy to separate as rubber cement. 

She’d had to rummage in the bathroom cupboard for ages before she’d found the rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, and then she’d had to fish around in her closet to find her sewing kit.  She had panicked briefly during that particular search, as she had absolutely no idea what sort of thread one was supposed to use to stitch up a wound, but then she pushed those doubts aside, deciding that if Shikamaru was going to be this stubborn in the first place, then plain old black thread would work just fine. 

She’d then rushed back to Shikamaru’s side and begun the painstaking process of removing his fishnet undershirt thread by thread, first soaking the area with rubbing alcohol and then tenderly wiggling the fabric free of its rust-red, congealed bonds.  By the time the last thread had come loose, nearly ten minutes had passed, and more than a few gasps of pain had escaped Shikamaru’s lips.  Strangely, though, he hadn’t been very vocal during the process—if she had been in his position, she’d have been cursing everyone and their mother; she, for one, knew just how badly rubbing alcohol stung on an open wound.  She wondered for a moment if he was making some sort of chivalrous attempt to be brave for her, but she knew that wasn’t in his nature.  Shikamaru wasn’t afraid of showing emotion.  She honestly thought that he was simply too consumed by his other thoughts to even notice that he was in pain until the stinging had already begun to fade. 

Temari shook her head, smiling sadly.  She’d never thought that she’d ever meet anyone who cared _too_ much about his friends, but there you go.  The universe just loved to prove her wrong.

And now, as she looked down at the threaded needle she’d bent into a gentle curve for the stitching process, her thoughts turned back to the immediate dilemma.  Could she actually do this?  Would she be able to heal him, or would this all go horribly wrong? 

She raised the needle until it was level with the right edge of the slice in his shoulder, but paused before she pricked the skin.  Kneeling there, with the needle hovering millimeters above the surface of the skin, she noticed Shikamaru’s right hand curl into a tight fist, with white knuckles and protruding veins to match.  He was bracing himself, as if he’d read her mind. 

She couldn’t screw this up.  She owed him, big time, and she was _not_ going to mess this up.  She took a deep breath and tilted her head up, eyes boring through the ceiling as she thought, _Lady Chiyo, if you can spare the time, I could really use your help right about now_.

“Are you gonna keep me waiting all night, or are you going to start soon?” she somehow heard over the pounding in her head.  He spoke lightly, as if he were trying to diffuse the situation.

“Hn?” she jumped as she snapped out of her inner monologue.  “Oh, yeah.  Okay.”  She re-focused her attention on Shikamaru’s seeping wound and re-aligned the needle.  She took one last deep breath, and then plunged the needle into the tender skin.

* * *

 Shikamaru had been to the hospital in the Hidden Leaf more than a few times.  He’d broken bones, been concussed, pulled muscles, and gotten mild infections, but he’d never had the distinct pleasure of getting stitches.  And now, he got to enjoy the whole procedure, and without anesthetic, no less.  He had assumed that the initial puncture would be the worst part of the process, but much to his dismay, he was wrong.  To be sure, the pricking hurt, but it was nothing compared to the sensation of the thread tugging at his skin as it slid through the tiny holes.  By the time Temari started on the second stitch, he was on the verge of tears, but he refused to cry.  He would not allow himself the luxury of letting out the pain while his friends were in the hospital, condition unknown.  Maybe he was being a bit of a masochist, but he felt that it was okay to be masochistic every once in a while. 

Besides, he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t cry anymore.  He was a ninja—he wasn’t supposed to show emotion.  That was one of the first rules they learned in the academy, one of the rules he now occasionally _taught_ in the academy, but he had never been one for rules.  He’d never paid that particular rule any mind (as Temari so loved to remind him whenever they met), and to be fair, his tears had never been unjustified.  But no more.  He’d promised himself after Asuma’s death that he’d be stronger, despite his father’s advice otherwise. 

And he _was_ stronger.  Or at least he thought so.

He felt the needle pierce the skin to begin the third stitch and he took a sharp breath and clenched his jaw to the point that he thought his teeth might crumble under the pressure.  He was bracing himself for the thread, it was coming, it was—

_Hnnnnnnnnnnnn_ , grunted his inner voice as the thread tugged away.  Oh, he was nauseous; he was definitely going to vomit if this kept up, but he just grit his teeth and persevered. 

* * *

 Temari didn’t know how many more stitches she could handle.  She had no doubt, based on the grunts escaping Shikamaru’s mouth, that the whole process was causing him a great deal of pain, but having to _see_ stitches being made wasn’t particularly pleasant either.  Watching the tip of the needle penetrate the tender, slightly inflamed flesh at the edge of the wound was disgusting, to say the least.  She’d done three stitches, four, five, six…

She worked methodically, watching Shikamaru’s muscles twitch with every tug of the thread.  After seven, the first wound was fairly well secured—she’d probably still make him go to a hospital eventually, but it was fine for now—but now she had to deal with the next wound.  That meant at least eight more stitches.

She definitely couldn’t go for that much longer without some sort of distraction.  Nothing too consuming, of course.  Just something mindless.  And hopefully something that would take some of Shikamaru’s attention from the needle as well.  She thought for a moment, but without much at her immediate disposal, she wasn’t left with many options. 

And so, as the needle broke the skin just below the second wound, she began to talk.

“I hate fighting,” she said.  “Or no, not fighting, but this.  The cleaning up afterwards.  I never wanted to be a ninja when I was little.  I’d seen what happened to ninjas, what happened to their families, what happened to their friends…I knew the extent of the collateral damage.  But I was the Kazekage’s daughter, so I was taught whether I wanted to learn or not.  I figured out pretty fast that I was good.  I was _really_ good.  We didn’t have a real academy in the Hidden Sand until a few years ago—well, I guess you know that; you helped us set it up—but anyway.  Shinobi here used to be taught individually, for the most part.  My brother and I were the exception.  Kankuro, that is.  Not Gaara.  They kept from teaching him for a really long time.  But Kankuro and I, we were taught by this great Jonin, Baki.  I think you met him, at the Chunin exams?  Well, he’s really serious most of the time, not a guy who’s quick to crack a smile at anything, but I remember that the first session I ever had with him, he smiled at me.  It was a really kind smile, one of the ones you always read about in books and stuff, that completely transform someone’s face.  That smile made him look so…I don’t know…excited.  Like a little kid who’d just gotten something really cool for his birthday.  It was one of those smiles that you knew you’d have to work for, but that you’d really want to see again.  I worked so hard.  _So_ hard.  I didn’t see that smile again until I’d become a Chunin.”

She took a break for breath and counted her stitches, to check how much progress she’d made.  Two stitches down, six to go. 

* * *

 Aw man, how much more of this would he have to sit through?  Every time he thought she must surely be on the last stitch, she proved him wrong.  He supposed that the pain was becoming a little more monotonous now, but it still hurt like hell.

Somehow, though, he felt himself grow numb as she began to talk.  He wasn’t sure how, but the words coming out of her mouth seemed to float down to cradle the needle and gently massage his aching muscles.  The words eased into his ears and scrambled his brain, a pleasant distraction. 

As he listened to her story, he began to wonder.  He’d been sent on missions with this kunoichi; he’d rescued her, she’d rescued him; they’d planned the Chunin Exams together the previous year, but had he ever actually heard her talk about herself?  In all the time they’d spent together, he didn’t think she’d ever said a word about her past.  She was usually so hard, so _cruel_ , but here he was, sitting, being stitched up as tenderly as if it were his own mother doing the work, and listening to Temari’s strong façade crumble.  She spoke softly, in a near whisper, almost as though she didn’t want the world to know what she was disclosing.  As if she didn’t even care if Shikamaru heard.

He eventually figured out that Temari _didn’t_ care.  She may have been pretending to tell her story for his benefit, but it seemed that she was just telling it to have said it out loud. 

Shikamaru knew from personal experience that sometimes just saying something out loud could make all the difference.

He exhaled slightly as he felt the needle prick his skin for the third stitch, and she began to talk once more.

“It was hard to become a Chunin,” she continued.  “Way harder than I’d thought.  I didn’t make it that first year, thanks to you.  I’d never had to face another tactician.  I guess I’d gotten used to being the smartest person in the room, but that’s a dangerous thing to get used to when you’re a shinobi.  I honestly thought you were an idiot.  I mean, I’ll admit that I was impressed by the way you defeated that woman from the Sound village in the Preliminaries, but I genuinely just thought that she was stupid, or something.  You were just so…lazy.  Which, I guess, was why you were so good.  You always defeated your enemy in the fewest possible moves.  Your sensei definitely taught you well there.  Heh.  Maybe when you get back, he can give you a few more lessons on how to avoid getting hit by shuriken, since you seem to have misunderstood a few of the key points there.”

She laughed silently for a moment, and he felt a gentle wave of hot breath on the back of his neck as a chill shot through his system at the mention of Asuma.  She had no way of knowing, of course, but it was a little bit of a shock hearing someone talk about his sensei in the present tense, like he would be waiting for Shikamaru when he returned to the Hidden Leaf.  He shivered as her laughter died out. 

“So I lost.  I lost, and then we went ahead with that asshole Orochimaru’s plan, and our village’s reputation was completely destroyed because of one ridiculous diplomatic blunder, and…I don’t know.  But that was a really bad time in the village.  And Kankuro, Gaara, and I had lost our father…”  She paused, inhaling sharply before beginning again.  He’d expected there to be a bit of a tremble in her voice, but what he heard instead was barely-suppressed rage.  “He really was a terrible father.  I wish I could say I was sad when he was killed, but if I did I’d be a liar.  I mean, Kankuro, Gaara, and I all have different mothers, for starters.  Our former Kazekage was a little more free-wheeling than the previous ones.  And then there’s the fact that all our mothers are dead.  Dad told me that they were all the victims of tragic accidents the one time I asked, but I could tell he was lying.  He’d had them killed.  I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but he did.  So we had to grow up without our mothers, and then our father all but abandoned us.  The only time I saw him when I was a kid was when he came home from his office.  And then he’d just shut himself in his bedroom and he wouldn’t come out until the following morning, but he’d be gone before any of us woke up.  We basically raised each other; no one else in the village would come near us.  I didn’t even have friends growing up.  Everyone was too afraid of Gaara to associate with me.  Hell, _I_ was afraid of Gaara.  When he finally started his shinobi training, I was amazed that Baki was able to get through a whole training session without wetting his pants.”

He could hear the one-sided smile creeping back into her voice, the jagged edges on her words gradually rounding out.  He knew why; he knew what happened next.

He realized somewhat belatedly that he hadn’t felt the needle’s point or the thread’s horrible tugging for a while now.  He had no idea whether she hadn’t started any new stitches or if he’d somehow gotten so lost in her words that he simply hadn’t noticed.  He didn’t really mind either way, of course, but it was interesting.

* * *

  _That’s four stitches done_ , thought Temari.  _Only four left._

The corners of her mouth twitched upward as she opened her mouth to finish her story.  “That was when I thought there was nowhere to go but down, but then something amazing happened.  I still don’t completely know what happened in that battle, but whatever that Naruto kid said to my brother…I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to thank him properly.  I know Gaara’s said his bit to him, but I want him to hear it from me, too.  After that fight, Gaara was so…different.  He used to be a boy who would kill you just for standing somewhere he didn’t want you to, but he became so kind.  He tried so hard to make amends for everything he’d done in the past.  At first, people were so suspicious of him.  When a monster starts smiling and trying to be friendly, any sane person would be a little uneasy, but eventually most people warmed up to him.  That was really the only thing that kept our village from crumbling after the Orochimaru fiasco.  But Gaara gave up his whole me-against-the-world act and the village started to be good again, and then we got word from the Hokage that you and your team were in trouble on some mission, so we came to help, and just…man, I can’t tell you how pissed I was when I saw you wearing that damned Chunin vest.  Just…no.  I still remember how much of an impression that made on me.  Half of me wanted to abandon you, and just let that crazy redhead finish you off.  Most of me wanted that, actually.  But there was this tiny part of me that wanted to step in.  Payback, you know?  You make an idiot of me; I return the favor.”

She shook her head, remembering the look of horror on his face when he’d realized she was there to rescue him.  “I think part of me wanted to prove myself to you, too.  ‘Cause you were such a terrible chauvinist and all.  I wanted to make sure you knew kunoichi could hold their own in battle.”  She giggled darkly.  “I think I proved my point.”

She paused briefly to check the alignment of her fifth stitch.  It was a bit crooked, but Shikamaru would just have to deal with it.  She rolled her shoulders, stretching out the kinks in her joints.  Being a Medic sure was hard work.

“After that, everything got better.  The Hidden Leaf trusted us again, the Hidden Sand respected Gaara more, we started to fix everything that was broken.  And I got promoted.  Baki was so proud of my brothers and I that he promoted us to Chunin as soon as we got back.  That’s when he smiled.  I remember that, more than anything else…but anyway.  About a year later, we became Jonin, and Gaara was promoted all the way to Kazekage, and I was put in his personal guard with Kankuro, and that’s how things have been ever since.  Actually, that’s a lie.  I wasn’t _put_ into his personal guard.  I’ve never admitted this to Gaara, or even Kankuro, but I went to the council and requested to be taken off the list of shinobi for formal missions.  I was still so afraid of fighting.  I couldn’t keep on risking my—no, not my.  My _family’s_ lives.  They’re all I have, you know?  I wasn’t gonna let them become another statistic.  So I got the best job I could possibly get—I was paid to protect my little brother.  ‘Cause that’s really the only time I feel good about fighting: when I’m protecting something I care about.  I think I might go a little overboard sometimes.  Kankuro always tells me that I get really scary in battle, and you probably think I’m some sort of crazy person.  I’ve been called a lot of things—scary, cruel…—but I can’t help it.  I think I just care too much.  I may hate fighting, but I’ll be the first one to the battlefield if I find out anyone I love is in danger.  If I have to die in this line of work, then so be it.  Gaara’s and Kankuro’s lives are worth ten of mine.”

She exhaled sharply, savoring the truths that were escaping from her lips.  She’d never said any of this out loud, and it felt so _liberating_ to finally tell someone.  She knew Shikamaru wouldn’t judge her, or think this was a weakness.  He would understand. 

“I know you feel the same way.  I saw it in your face during the battle, when you were watching your friends.  I always thought it was so funny that people as different as we are could have something like that in common.  When you were setting off the explosions...the look on your face looked so much like how Kankuro described mine.  It was eerie.  But then, the Hidden Leaf has a reputation for that sort of thing.  Protecting their comrades, I mean.  That’s something I’ve always admired about your village.  There aren’t that many people here who think that way.  Here, it’s every man looking out for his own interests, and to hell with everyone else’s.”  She sighed.  “It’s barbaric.”

She counted the stitches—seven done, one left.

“Well anyway, it’s nice to know that some village somewhere has its priorities in order,” she concluded, poising the needle to begin the final stitch. 

Suddenly, she thought she heard Shikamaru speak.  He hadn’t made a sound for what felt like hours, but she could’ve sworn she’d heard his voice.  She thought he’d mumbled something about the ‘Will of Fire,’ but that couldn’t have been what he’d said; that didn’t make any sense.

“What’d you say, Nara?” she asked, still half-believing she’d imagined his voice.

“The Will of Fire,” said Shikamaru, more strongly this time.  “We have to protect the King.”

“The King?  What do you mean, like the Hokage?”

He chuckled good-naturedly and his back vibrated jarringly under the needle.  “That’s what I thought at first, too.”  He didn’t elaborate.

“So then who is it?” she asked, unsure exactly why she was so curious.

“It doesn’t work like that.  It’s not something I can just tell you.  You have to figure it out for yourself,” he replied cryptically.

_Well Nara is no help at all_ , thought Temari as she pulled the thread taut after making the final stitch.  She tied off the thread and admired her handiwork.  She ran a finger lightly across each row of stitches and saw Shikamaru’s back ripple under her touch as he shivered.  Her eyes lingered for a moment on the slightly uneven stitching and the effect it had on his muscular back, but then she shook herself from her thoughts.

“You’re all set,” she said gruffly.

Shikamaru struggled momentarily to get to his feet after such a long period of sitting, but he got up, rolled his shoulders a few times to make sure the stitches wouldn’t snap, and proceeded to turn to face her.

“Thanks,” he said, but Temari wasn’t really listening.  She was staring at his bare chest, which was riddled with small pockmarks and scars, tiny bands of raised, pink skin on his otherwise streamlined frame.  She’d always assumed he was sort of skinny and weak, but she saw now that that was not the case at all.  He was definitely svelte, but where she’d expected vast expanses of soft flesh, she found shadows betraying the existence of toned abdominals and a thin trail of dark hair creeping toward his bellybutton. 

Distracted, it took her a few moments to realize that he was wrapping his arms around himself and his teeth were chattering quietly. 

“Oh shit, are you cold?” Temari asked dumbly.  _Idiot, of course he’s cold_ , she thought.  _We’re in the goddamn desert.  It gets cold at night_.  “I’ll…um…get you some of Kankuro’s clothes to sleep in.”

She glanced quickly up at the clock on her wall, startling when she discovered it was already past midnight.  “You can sleep in here,” she offered.  “I can sleep on the couch until we figure something out.”

“It’s alright,” he protested.  “I can sleep on the cou—”

“No,” interrupted Temari as she left her room and navigated her way to Kankuro’s.  She rooted around in his closet until she found some clothes Shikamaru could use and called, “You take the bed.  You need a good night’s sleep more than I do right now.”

She quickly returned to her room, tossing the clothes to Shikamaru.  He caught them automatically, and then looked down at them as if he were surprised they were there.  “Thanks, ‘Mari,” he responded sleepily. 

“Don’t mention it,” she returned.  She walked back to the doorway, pausing briefly to mumble, “Good night, Nara,” over her shoulder.  She walked purposefully toward the living room, grabbing some sheets and a pillow from a stack of fresh laundry on a nearby chair.  She threw them onto the couch haphazardly and then fell forward, unable to stand any longer.  She was asleep before she’d hit the pillow.

* * *

 Shikamaru, try as he might, couldn’t sleep.  He’d tossed and turned for what must have been hours, but his mind wouldn’t let him rest.  Every time his eyelids finally fluttered shut, he’d suddenly see a flash of Choji crumpled on the ground with a slit throat, or Naruto with his yellow hair stained blood red, or Hinata with her eyes as blank as ever, but now with a deadness to match.  His brain tortured him endlessly with thoughts of his friends in the hospital, condition unknown.  _Your friends could be dying for all you know_ , nagged the little voice in his head, _and you’re here sitting pretty in the comfort of Temari’s bed.  You sicken me._

The voice was little more than a whisper, but Shikamaru heard it as though it were shouting.  Finally, it got to be too much, so he got up and did the only thing he could think to do that had any potential to calm him down: he got out of bed, fished around in the pile of dirty clothes on the floor until he’d found his pack of emergency cigarettes and his lighter, and then he tip-toed out to the balcony, careful not to wake the quietly-snoring Temari. 

Standing outside in the cool night air and the moon’s milky glow, he placed a cigarette between his chapped lips and began to fumble with the lighter with his trembling fingers. 

_Click…click…click…_

When the fire finally caught, he lifted the flame to lick the tip of the cigarette and gratefully sucked the first throat-searing breath.  He savored the taste of the smoke as it filled his lungs, and he felt his trembling subside almost instantly.  The calm slowly seeped throughout his body, permeating from his very core, and much to his dismay, as he relaxed, he felt a single tear slip down his face. 

He sighed, smoke leaking from his mouth and nostrils.  Smoking and crying: the two things he’d promised himself he’d quit, and here he was, in the dead of night, doing both of them.  He carried the cigarettes not because he needed them, but because they were a small memento of Asuma.  He’d thought he’d quit after his battle with Hidan, but apparently he’d lied to himself.  He couldn’t believe how much he’d been craving a cigarette for the past few hours. 

_But this is the last one_ , he promised himself. 

He took another desperate pull on the cigarette.

* * *

  _Temari whimpered as he thrusted, biting her lip so hard she tasted blood.  She wrapped her fingers in his long, black hair as he nibbled on her earlobe.  Her hips bucked against his, sending shivers down her spine.  One of his hands moved from its place on her ass and lightly traced its way up her waist until it came to rest on her breast.  His fingers stroked gently as he pressed her ever deeper into the thick bedding.  She arched her back in pleasure, moaning…_

_“Shikamaru,” she begged.  “More.”_

_He obliged, smoothly maneuvering until he was pressed deep against her core.  He leaned down to meet her lips with his, and she gasped as he kissed her.  Her hands roamed, grasping desperately at his muscular shoulders as a cry built in her chest.  She was reaching her limit._

Temari awoke rather abruptly, breathing harder than she should have been.  _Man, what was I dreaming about?_ she wondered.  _Must have been a nightmare or something._

She rubbed at her eyes, slowly bringing herself back to full alertness.  She squinted to read the clock on the wall and found that it was 3:28 AM.  She cursed herself for waking at such an ungodly hour, but she soon noticed the stale smell of smoke.  She looked around the apartment frantically, thinking something was on fire, but then her eyes alighted on a shadowy figure on the balcony and the subtle glow of the embers of a cigarette.  She grudgingly got up from her resting place on the couch and padded toward the balcony doors.

* * *

 Distracted by the smoky haze and the view of the full moon, Shikamaru nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a voice behind him suddenly taunt, “Picking up your sensei’s bad habits, are we?”

Quickly regaining his composure, he glanced over his shoulder.  “Hey, Temari,” he said nonchalantly.  “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“Not at all,” she replied, coming to join him at the balcony rail.  She looked up at the moon with her heavy-lidded blue eyes and asked, “So when did that start?”

“What?”

“The smoking.”

“Oh…not that long ago.  Maybe a month?”

“Ah,” she sighed.  “You should quit while you can.  It’s a terrible habit to get into.  Just ask your sensei.  I bet he could tell you.”

Shikamaru scowled as he remembered the events of the past couple months.  “Yeah,” he hedged.  “He tried to quit once.”

“Oh yeah?  How come?  He doesn’t seem like the type to quit cold-turkey without good reason.”

“He has a baby on the way, with Kurenai,” careful to phrase it so that it was in the present tense, but not a lie.  “Do you remember Kurenai?” he continued.  “She was at the Chunin exams too.  Great lady.  Excellent kunoichi.  He tried to quit for her and the baby.  He was doing pretty well too,” he commented, wincing as he heard the implied _but_ at the end of the sentence.

Unfortunately, that _but_ didn’t go unnoticed.  “So why didn’t he quit?” inquired Temari.  “What happened?  What changed?”

Shikamaru swallowed a lump that had risen in his throat and took another drag on the cigarette before answering.  “He died,” he stated matter-of-factly as he exhaled.

Temari whipped her head around to face him, her eyes wide with shock.  “What?”

“Yeah,” grunted Shikamaru, flicking the ashes from the tip of his cigarette.  “He’s dead.”

“Asuma?  Big, strong Asuma?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

“He got killed by two Akatsuki.”

Temari’s eyes opened even wider at that.  “What happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you the whole story later, but it doesn’t matter anyway; we defeated them.  That’s the only thing that matters.”

“Wait, you— _you_ defeated an Akatsuki?!”

“Yeah,” he shrugged.  “I mean, he was such a loudmouth, the one who killed Asuma.  It was kind of a drag fighting him, ‘cause he was such an asshole, but whatever.  The others took care of the difficult one, and I got my revenge.”

“Wait, are you saying that you defeated an Akatsuki single-handedly?”

Shikamaru raised the cigarette to his lips again and took a short puff.  “Yeah,” he deadpanned, as if that were no big deal.

“Man, just when I thought I was catching up…” Temari mumbled.

“Huh?” Shikamaru asked, unsure he’d heard right.

“Nothing,” Temari quickly replied.  “Well…I’m sorry, Nara.  If I’d known I wouldn’t’ve…you know…” she trailed off.

“It’s not a big deal,” Shikamaru assured.  “What’s done is done; there’s no point in wondering what would’ve happened if things had been different.” 

_Hypocrite_ , went the voice in his head.  _Take your own advice, you moron_.

And it was true—he clearly couldn’t let go of the past.  The cigarette smoldering away between his fingers was clear evidence of that.  So why should he go telling others to forgive and forget?  He shook off his doubts and tried to provide Temari with some rationale. 

“I started smoking right after he died, and I quit pretty soon after that.  Or I’d thought I had,” he explained haltingly.  “I just…” he began, “I guess I’m just worried about my friends.  I couldn’t sleep and I needed to calm down.”

He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel Temari’s pitying gaze boring into the side of his head.  She slowly pivoted and walked toward him until she was no more than a foot from him. 

“Nara,” she pleaded.  “Don’t worry; they’ll be fine.  Don’t forget that my brother’s hurt too.  I’m just as worried as you are.”  She sighed, and he could hear the concern in her voice.  “We’ll go to the hospital first thing tomorrow, okay?”

Shikamaru turned his head slightly so that he met her intense gaze with his droopy-eyed, half-asleep one.  “Okay,” he whispered, but then he was struck by a sudden question.  “Hey,” he began.  “Why’d you tell me all that earlier?”  He was asking not to pry, but simply to see if he’d been right before. 

Temari took a deep gulp of night air, and when she exhaled the breath misted over.  Shikamaru’s mouth twitched.  It almost looked like she was smoking too.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I think I just felt like talking, and I thought you would listen.”  She tilted her head up at him and their eyes met.  “You’re a good friend, Nara,” she smiled. 

With that, Temari reached over and plucked the cigarette from his lazy fingers and tossed it over the side of the balcony into the smothering sand below.  “Go get some sleep,” she commanded.  “It’s been a long day.”


	3. The Hospital

“These are hard times.  The world hurts.  We live in fear and forget to walk with hope.  But hope has not forgotten you.  So ask it to dinner.  It’s probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.”

—Going Bovine, Libba Bray

* * *

**Chapter 3: The Hospital**

“Names?”

“Temari no Sabaku and Shikamaru Nara.”

The nurse behind the counter recorded this information in the Hospital Logbook, being far more slow and meticulous than Temari really thought was necessary.  They were in a hurry, after all.

The nurse smacked her bubblegum and pursed her lips as she looked back up at the haggard pair in front of her.  She tucked a strand of long, brown hair that had come loose from her bun behind her ear.  “And you’re here to see…” she asked, clearly irritated.

“My brother, Kankuro no Sabaku, and…” Temari trailed off, gesturing to Shikamaru to complete the sentence. 

“Choji Akimichi, Naruto Uzumaki, Hinata Hyuga, and Sai.”

The nurse jotted this in her notes in her flowy, overly complex script.  She took extra care to dot the _i_ ’s with little hearts.  She stopped rather abruptly after writing Sai’s name, her pen still hovering expectantly above the page.  “Sai what?” she demanded.

Shikamaru shrugged unhelpfully.  “I dunno.”

The nurse arched a delicately plucked eyebrow in disbelief.  “He’s your friend and you don’t even know his last name?” she quipped, tapping one of her long, ornately decorated fingernails against her pen.

Shikamaru’s lip curled distastefully—Temari could tell that this nurse was grating on his last nerve.  “Nope,” he replied tersely, his lips making a sharp popping sound on the ‘p’.

“Right,” she said as she tossed her pen onto her desk.  “Lemme just check their files.”  She turned away and started to rifle through the wall of manila folders behind her, pausing every so often to remove one.

Temari turned to glance at Shikamaru.  He really did look awful—he had harsh dark circles under his eyes, dirt caked into his hair, and he still smelled of stale smoke from last night.  She was sure that she didn’t look (or smell) much better.  They were no doubt a rather startling sight to the other people in the waiting room, but Shikamaru had absolutely refused to waste any time when they’d awoken that morning.  As soon as Temari had awoken on the couch, he’d been all but pulling her out the door and to the hospital. 

Now that they were here, of course, his level of anxiety was abating somewhat.  She could see it in the way the corners of his eyes softened. 

The nurse returned to her desk with four very thin manila folders and one rather thick one.  Temari was fairly sure she knew which one was Kankuro’s.  The nurse picked up one of the thin folders with her manicured hand and flicked it open, her eyes dancing quickly across the page.  Her brow furrowed in confusion as her gaze landed on one piece of information.

“Hmm,” she muttered, tossing that folder aside and grabbing another one.  She repeated the mechanical reading, eventually tossing that folder aside as well.

Temari glanced over at Shikamaru and was unnerved when she saw the apprehensive expression on his face, the darkness in his eyes.  A vein was throbbing in his forehead, threatening to burst if this nurse kept taking her sweet time. 

Finally, after the nurse had finished scanning all four of the skinny folders, she raised a slender finger at Shikamaru.  Temari winced as she heard Shikamaru take a sharp breath, bracing himself for the worst. 

“Your friends are all fine,” she said.  “This says they’ve already been discharged.  They’ve been taken to the visitors’ quarters over by the Kazekage’s office, so I guess you can find them there.”

Shikamaru heaved a huge sigh of relief, but Temari felt none of his ease.  “And what about my brother?” she demanded.

“Oh, yeah,” said the nurse, clearly annoyed at being badgered.  She grabbed the thick folder unceremoniously and began thumbing through the pages, making a tremendous show of the whole endeavor.  She ran her fingertip along the page, searching for the relevant information, and finally came across something useful.  The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, a gruff, angry voice floated out of one of the nearby rooms, spooking the nurse and causing her to drop the folder, multicolored pages fluttering haphazardly all over the pristine tile floors.

“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?  QUIT TELLING ME WHAT I CAN AND CAN’T DO.  I KEEP TELLING YOU _I’M FINE_!  JUST LET ME FUCKING GO ALREADY!”

Temari glared down triumphantly at the nurse, who was on her hands and knees trying to gather papers.  Temari painted a fake smile on her face and condescended, “We won’t be needing your help any longer.  I think we just found who we were looking for.” 

With that, Temari grabbed a fistful of Shikamaru’s vest and began pulling him bodily down the hall to the door from which the noise was emanating. 

* * *

Shikamaru wasn’t entirely sure what was going on.  He could feel himself moving, but his whole body was numb.  His eyes were glazed over, his ears were buzzing, and his feet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.  He could be dying, for all he knew.  He could be tumbling to his death, or marching to the gallows, or any number of bizarre, macabre circumstances, but he wouldn’t know.  The only thing he knew in that moment was the sensation that was eclipsing all others, the phrase that played itself over and over in his mind, that danced across his vision, that fluttered along beside him like a million tiny butterflies, carrying him and his heavy feet to wherever it was he was going: _They’re okay._

He could see nothing but _They’re okay_.  He heard nothing but _They’re okay_.  He felt nothing but _They’re okay_.  He could not think of another time in his life that he’d felt such relief, except perhaps after that first mission-gone-wrong.  He was sure he was smiling like some kind of idiot, but strangely, he was okay with that.

Suddenly, he was jerked to his right and he was sent reeling as he came back to his senses.  He was in a starkly lit hospital room with three other occupants.  Temari, of course, but also a rowdy brown-haired boy in a patterned hospital gown and a doctor, who was sweating profusely as he attempted to prevent the brown-haired boy from getting out of his bed.  The boy was putting up a tremendous fight, and he was yelling at the top of his lungs, as if he could fling the doctor from his side with sheer volume. 

“JUST LET ME GO TO THE FUCKING BATHROOM, OR I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL PISS ALL OVER YOUR PRECIOUS UNIFORM!”

“KANKURO!” Temari shrieked, and the boy’s jerking stopped.  Shikamaru gaped.  This boy was Kankuro?  He hadn’t recognized him without his kabuki makeup.  He glanced back at Temari for confirmation, but she was already off interrogating the doctor.  “What the hell is going on in here?” she demanded.

The doctor hastily removed his hands from Kankuro’s shoulders and moved to wipe the sweat from his brow.  “And who might you be, Miss?”

“I’m his sister.”

“Well that’s very nice Miss, but I’m afraid this is a matter between myself and the patient.”

“I also happen to be a member of the Kazekage’s personal guard.”

The doctor laughed.  “A little lady like you?  I’m sorry Miss, but I’m not sure I believe you.”  He turned back to Kankuro, who was attempting to take advantage of the doctor’s distraction to get out of bed.

Turning his back on Temari’s was a very poor decision indeed.  Shikamaru could practically see the steam billowing from Temari’s ears and the flames dancing in her eyes as she lunged at the doctor.  There was a glint of steel as Temari slipped a kunai from its sheath and within seconds she had the doctor pinned to the floor, the knife at his throat. 

“Listen up, you ridiculous chauvinist: whether or not you believe me is not my concern,” she spat venomously, “but _you will tell me what is going on with my brother_.  Or do you want me to contact Lord Gaara?” 

The doctor gulped, his Adam’s apple pressing against the cold blade as he looked into Temari’s face.  Shikamaru couldn’t help but feel bad for the man—he knew how it felt to be on the receiving end on one of Temari’s attacks, and it wasn’t fun.  But at the same time, he was being pretty rude. 

Shikamaru glanced up at Kankuro, who was sitting upright with his feet swinging joyfully over the edge of the bed.  He had a toothy grin on his face, obviously enjoying the doctor’s discomfort. For a moment, Shikamaru thought he might even applaud his sister’s performance, but Kankuro somehow managed to restrain himself. 

The doctor licked his lips nervously and began to speak in a very small voice.  “Kankuro needs to urinate, but he refuses to use the bedpan.”

“And why should he have to?” demanded Temari.

“Well, it’s against hospital protocol to allow patients to use the public bathroom facilities within twenty-four hours of an operation.  We have to allow his wound to heal properly,” the doctor continued.

“Well this may _shock_ you, seeing as I’m a _woman_ ,” Temari hissed at him, pressing the kunai’s flat side into the doctor’s neck even harder, “but I was at the battle yesterday, so I saw his wound.  A single gash to the thigh, about six inches long, about one inch deep?  That’s not something twenty-four hours is going to fix. And if you did your job properly, if it’s stitched and bandaged properly and you had a Medical Ninja look at it, I don’t see why he’s even still here.  There’s not much more you can do for him, am I correct?  And I want you to think long and careful before answering.  I’m sore, I’m exhausted, I’m dirty, and I’m mad, and you definitely don’t want to test me right now.”

Shikamaru whistled quietly.  This poor doctor was getting absolutely _smoked_. 

The doctor’s eyes twitched around in their sockets, glancing frantically back-and-forth between Temari and Shikamaru, who was standing above the whole mess.  The doctor finally met Shikamaru’s eyes, pleading him for backup, imploring Shikamaru to see reason.  Shikamaru simply shrugged.  There was no way he was saying anything contrary to Temari right now.  She was scary when she was like this.  The doctor sighed dramatically as his eyes shifted back to Temari.  “I suppose you’re right, Miss,” he relented. 

Temari’s grip on the kunai loosened and she slowly got back to her feet.  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” she said coldly.  She turned to Kankuro, who was already slipping off the bed, his bare feet gradually coming into contact with the cold tile floor.  She smirked at him as he padded over to her.  “Go take a piss, Kankuro,” she said.

“You’re the best, sis,” he responded, clapping her on the back as he limped to the door.  As he neared Shikamaru, he sprouted a heartfelt smile and exclaimed, “Hey, Leaf Boy!  You were awesome yesterday, I swear.”  He paused and leaned closer to him, as if he were about to speak some kind of crucial secret.  “And don’t be so loud—you might wake the other patients,” he joked, proceeding to the door. 

Shikamaru laughed heartily, making his first real sound in what felt like hours.  “It’s good to see you again,” he called over his shoulder, slowly pivoting to see Kankuro shuffling down the hallway. 

“You too,” shouted Kankuro, waving but not turning around.  His open-backed hospital gown fluttered around his bandaged thigh as he moved, exposing his bare ass to all the people who’d swarmed the hallway to see what all the commotion was about. 

Temari, who’d joined Shikamaru in the doorway, chuckled quietly and shouted down the hall, “You’re such a moron, little bro!”  With her smile still twinkling in her eyes, she turned to Shikamaru.  “He scares me sometimes.”

Shikamaru met her gaze.  “You scare me sometimes,” he responded bluntly.  He nodded behind both of them, where the doctor was still struggling to his feet clumsily with a dazed expression on his face.  “What happened to all that ‘I hate fighting’ shit?”

“It’s not like I was actually gonna hurt him or anything,” she defended.  “Besides,” she added quietly.  “That asshole was practically begging for it.”

There was a shrill squeak as the doctor’s shoe skidded on the tile floor and Temari whipped around, her smile disappearing completely.  “You!” she shouted.  “Don’t think I forgot about you.  You’re gonna get me all of Kankuro’s personal effects.  He’s coming with me.”

The doctor wrung his hands, flustered.  “Miss, I’m not sure that’s the best idea.  It might be beneficial for him to remain in the hospital for a couple more da—”

“GET ME HIS SHIT; I’M TAKING HIM HOME.”

The doctor bowed furiously, trembling with fear.  “Y-y-yes, Miss.”  He scampered out the door, failing to meet their eyes.  As they watched him scurry into the distance, Temari sighed.  “Ah…It’s good to have my brother back.”  She nudged Shikamaru’s side with her elbow.  “And now we can go get your friends.”

Shikamaru felt that same dumb grin spread across his face as he thought again, _They’re okay_.  And now he was going to see them.  This was going to be a good day; he could feel it.

* * *

Outside the hospital, Temari raised her hand to shield her eyes from the mid-morning sun.  The air was already sweltering in the desert, and as she, Shikamaru, and Kankuro began the journey back to the Kazekage’s headquarters, and she could see Kankuro fidgeting uncomfortably in his black uniform as he stepped into the sun’s direct path.  In his work, he spent a great deal of time inside (in the shade) tending to his puppets, so the traditional heat-absorbing puppetmaster garb was rarely a real problem, but now, on what was shaping up to be one of the hottest days the Hidden Sand had seen that year, Temari was having a bit of trouble seeing where exactly the practicality came into play.  She’d have to put that on her list of things to ask the village elders when she had the chance.

The unruly trio set off into the village just as the storefronts began to open.  As they passed, restaurant doors all around them began to open and a plethora of scents started to fill the street.  Temari smelled sweet dumplings, hot buns, sesame noodles, miso broth.  Her stomach rumbled, and Temari recalled that she’d skipped breakfast.  Temari grinned as they passed her favorite fruit stand, where the owner, a kindly white-haired woman named Sachiko, was setting out her wares for the day.  She glanced up and stretched her lips into a toothy smile upon seeing Temari, raising a weathered hand to wave hello.  Temari jogged over, fishing around in her pockets for change.

“Good morning, Sachiko-san,” she sing-songed pleasantly.

“Good morning, Temari,” Sachiko returned.  “What’ll it be today?”

Temari extracted the appropriate amount of money from her pocket and handed the woman the coins.  “Three, please.”

Sachiko accepted the money with a mild nod of her head.  “Three of what?”

Temari shrugged.  “Whatever you think is best.”

Sachiko appraised her wares, finally plucking three ruby-red apples from the pile.  “These okay?”

“Perfect,” Temari smiled, eyes twinkling as she took the food from the woman.  “Thank you, Sachiko-san!” she called over her shoulder as she walked back toward Kankuro and Shikamaru, who had continued on their way, lost in the chaos of the hustle and bustle around them.  She heard Sachiko chortle good-naturedly behind her.

The crowd of people in the street was growing quickly, the village gradually transitioning into full swing.  Tenants in the upstairs apartments opened their windows, calling across the way to each other and stringing up their laundry.  For the life of her, Temari could not stop smiling.  She was rarely awake in time to see it, but she absolutely loved seeing the city come to life in the morning. 

She saw her brother’s cloaked head and Shikamaru’s ponytail bobbing a few feet in front of her.  “Boys!” she called.  As they turned around, she tossed two of the apples into the air, each of them catching one.  “Breakfast,” Temari said in explanation, taking a bite of her apple.  The cool, sticky juice dribbled down her chin.  Delicious.  She wiped at her chin savagely to catch the juice before it dripped onto her chest.

Kankuro snorted as he took a bite of his apple.  “That’s not very _lady-like_ , sis,” he jested. 

Temari glared at him.  “Don’t even start with me,” she said.  “Don’t forget I’m the one who sprung you from that joint; I’m not afraid to send you back.”

Kankuro held up his hands in surrender.  “Jeez,” he enunciated exaggeratedly.  “I was only joking.”  He took another chomp out of his apple, chewing a few times with his mouth open before leaning down close to Temari’s ear.  “ _Miss_ ,” he whispered slyly, almost as an afterthought.

Temari slapped him away, shoving him roughly with her shoulder.  “I am going to _kill you_ ,” she shrieked, desperately trying to hold back the laughter that was dying to escape from her mouth.  “And I swear, when I do, I’m going to enjoy it.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Kankuro smirked.  “Not one bit.”

Temari shook her head in disbelief.  Her brother could be such a pain sometimes.  _Ha_ , she thought, glancing over at Shikamaru.  _I almost sounded like Nara just then_.

Shikamaru’s eyebrows were wrinkled in concentration as he nibbled mindlessly at his apple.  His dark eyes were fixed on the ground, but it was clear to Temari that he wasn’t watching where he was going.  She wasn’t sure what he was even seeing, but it certainly wasn’t the sand.  “Hey, Nara,” she prodded softly.  “You okay?”

Shikamaru started, glancing up at Temari with frightened eyes.  “Huh?” he asked, returning his gaze to the ground as he processed the question.  “Oh.  Yeah.  Fine.”  He took another nibble of his apple, chewing meticulously before swallowing.  He looked like he was in pain.

“No, you’re not,” she muttered, shoving Kankuro away as he craned his head to listen in.  “What’s eating you?  You should be happy, right?  We’re going to see your friends.”

Shikamaru tilted his head ever so slightly, a habit she knew he fell into when he was thinking but didn’t want to be too obvious about it.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  “I think I’m just a little nervous.”

Temari looked into his blank eyes, searching for an answer she knew wasn’t there.  “Of what?”

“How they’ll react.”

“What, when they see you?”

“Mm,” he confirmed, taking a large chunk out of his apple without even the slightest change in facial expression.  It was unnerving, really, how much he cared.  She would have thought that he’d be too lazy to care this much, but it turned out that Shikamaru was full of surprises.  He definitely wasn’t everything he’d seemed.

“I don’t get it,” she started.  “Why should you be nervous?  They’re your friends, right?”

“Well, yeah,” he mumbled around the apple.  “But…” he sighed, “I kind of…y’know…abandoned them.  During the battle.  I did what I thought I had to do to win but…I just left them to fend for themselves.  I was their Captain and I let them down.”  He bit his lip, bracing himself for her judgment.

Temari wanted to laugh at his embarrassment, his sincerity, but couldn’t bring herself to, so she just settled for a slight crinkling around the corners of her eyes as she responded.  “That’s all you _can_ do in battle,” she sympathized.  “You focus on winning; everything else is a postscript.  That’s practically the first rule of being a shinobi.”

“Yeah,” said Shikamaru, “and maybe that’s how things work here, but in the Hidden Leaf, we don’t put much faith in the rules.”

“Well obviously,” Temari replied forcefully.  “That’s why you’re so good.”

Shikamaru looked up from whatever was so mesmerizing on the ground, surprised at Temari’s answer.  “Why do you say that?”

Temari shrugged.  “Why do you think we modeled our Shinobi Academy after yours?  You’ve proven time and time again that you’re better than us.  As much as I hate to admit it, you beat me fair and square in the Chunin Exams.  That Uchiha brat all but defeated Gaara; Kankuro chickened out and didn’t even fight.”

A dignified, “ _Hey!_ ” floated over to them from Kankuro, who had evidently decided to eavesdrop despite Temari’s encouragement otherwise.

“Oh, don’t give me that shit; it’s true,” Temari shot back.  “We all know it.  We staged a full-fledged attack against your village with Orochimaru _and_ a Jinchuriki on our side, and we lost.  There’s no sugarcoating that.  We lost because the Hidden Leaf is better.  I didn’t understand why until Naruto rescued Gaara from the Akatsuki, but then it was so _obvious_.  You guys care about each other.  When you guys go on missions, they’re about protecting your friends, not retrieving some top-secret document or whatever other crap you guys get stuck with.”

Shikamaru, strangely enough, cracked a smile at that.  The smile was contemplative and distant at best, but at least he didn’t look like a crazed angsty teenager anymore. 

“What?” Temari prompted.  “Why’re you smiling?”

Shikamaru shook his head.  “Just thinking about something I heard Kakashi Sensei say once.”

Temari waited for more, but it appeared Shikamaru wasn’t going to supply anything more without further questions.  This conversation was like pulling teeth.  “What’d he say?” she asked, genuinely curious.

Shikamaru took a deep breath.  “ _In the Ninja world, those who break the rules are regarded as scum, but those who would abandon even one of their friends are worse than scum._ ”

Temari whistled.  “That, from that guy…wait, Kakashi is the white-haired guy, right?  The one who reads the trashy romance novels?”

“Yup.”

“Wow,” she said, finally at a loss for words.  “He sounds like a smart guy.”

Shikamaru nodded.  “He is.”

The trio walked on in silence for a few more minutes, but before long a child’s shrill voice pierced the air.

“ _TEMARI SENSEIIIIIIIIIIIII!_ ” shrieked a black-clad projectile as it sped straight for Temari.  It barreled into her at full speed, sending the apple core flying from her hand and nearly knocking her over, but she somehow managed to stay upright.  She looked down at the tiny child who had buried her face in Temari’s thigh, clinging desperately to her sensei’s legs as if she were afraid something awful would happen if she let go.  Temari felt her trembling against her and felt a wet patch forming on her skirt as the girl sobbed.  She felt Kankuro and Shikamaru’s eyes boring into her, asking her what the hell was going on; she simply shrugged at them.  She delicately placed a hand on the girl’s head, stroking gently at her shoulder-length jet-black hair.

“Yumi,” she said softly.  “What’s wrong?”

Yumi tilted her face directly up, and Temari was dismayed to see the trail of gloopy snot leading from her nose to the wet patch on her skirt, but was a bit too worried to be properly angry.  “I w-w-was s-so s-s- _scared_!” stuttered Yumi, _hiccupping_ pathetically and raising one pudgy fist to her swollen face to wipe at her bloodshot eyes and dripping nose. 

Temari slowly knelt, trying to lessen the ridiculous height difference between herself and her student, grasping one of Yumi’s hands (making sure it wasn’t the one she’d used to wipe her nose) with her own.  “Scared of what?”

Yumi sniffled, gasping for breath.  Temari was getting really worried; she’d never seen her this shaken up.

Suddenly, Yumi flung her arms around Temari’s neck.  It was still a stretch for her, despite the fact that Temari was on her knees, but Yumi pulled her into a hug anyway, this time burying her face in Temari’s shoulder.  Temari, never having been one to understand emotional etiquette, didn’t reciprocate the hug, deciding instead to simply allow Yumi’s continued contact.

“Y-y-you left during class yesterd-d-day and nobody knew w-where you were,” she mumbled into Temari’s shirt, the fabric muffling her sobs.  “And I went home and asked my m-m-mommy, and she said there was a big b-battle going on outside and you were th-there and I was s-s-so scared ‘cause I thought you were gonna d-d-d- _die_!” she shrieked.

Temari was stunned.  Yumi usually sat in the very back of the class, constantly twiddling her fingers and hiding her face behind her dark curtains of hair.  She never raised her hand to answer questions; she rarely participated in class sparring matches; she was incredibly timid and shy.  To be honest, Temari had always thought Yumi had hated her, or at the very least been afraid of her.  She’d never thought that her participation in a battle would merit this kind of reaction from anybody, let alone a six-year old who’d been thrown into the Shinobi Academy by strict parents who expected their frail daughter to be strong.  Yumi had never been particularly disposed to being a ninja, and Temari had always been particularly hard on her, having to urge her on far more than the other students, so Yumi in particular had decent reason to hate her.  It had never occurred to Temari that Yumi actually cared about her.

Temari looked down at the shivering girl tenderly, and finally wrapped her arms around the girl, holding her tight.  Temari hunched over to bring her mouth closer to Yumi’s ear and whispered, “It’s alright, Yumi.  I’m okay.”

The girl sniffled once weakly before taking a tiny step back, breaking the hug.  Her tears were ebbing now, her hysteria fading. “Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed, standing up.  “Look at me.”  She held out her arms and did a little spin.  “I’m not even hurt.”

Yumi’s tear-streaked face broke into an ear-to-ear smile, laughing joyfully.  She grabbed Temari’s hand and began tugging Temari along, so the trio began on their way again, still heading for the Kazekage’s headquarters.  Temari thought Yumi was done with her outburst, but just as she was about to suggest that Yumi go back to whoever she was with, Yumi opened her mouth to speak again.

“I can’t wait until I’m a big strong kunoichi like you, sensei,” Yumi gushed.  “I’m gonna train so hard—you’ll see!  Next time there’s a battle, I’m gonna fight with you!”

Temari felt a proud smile twitching the edges of her mouth.  “I can’t wait,” she said softly, as if she were presenting Yumi with a vital secret. 

“Yumi?” someone called in the distance, causing Yumi to stop in her tracks.  “Yumi? Where’d you go?”

“Hiroki?” Yumi yelled. 

“Yumi!” shouted a skinny black-haired kid as he broke through a crowd and came into view.  “Man, why’d you run off?  Mom and Dad are freaking out!”  He grabbed her hand and squatted down, looking at her.  “Have you been crying?”

“She’s fine now; we took care of her,” said Temari.

Hiroki started, just noticing who his little sister had been standing with, and quickly straightened and started combing his hair back with his fingers. 

“Oh,” he said, blushing, “good morning, Lady Temari.”

Temari rolled her eyes slightly.  “Good morning, Hiroki.”

Kankuro, somewhat jealous of all the attention Temari was getting today, cleared his throat loudly.

Hiroki turned, taking notice of him for the first time.  “Oh, hey, Kankuro Sensei!”

Kankuro smiled wide and raised his right hand for a high-five which Hiroki quickly returned.  “What’s up, man?  Have you been doing those shuriken drills?”

“You bet!  I’m getting so much better.  I’m hitting the targets almost every time now!”

“What’d I tell you?  You just had to find the right motivation, that’s all.”

Hiroki shot a slightly guilty look at Temari, but averted his eyes quickly.  “Yeah.  Right, Sensei,” he said as his eyes searched for something else, anything else to look at.  His gaze ultimately fell on Shikamaru.  “Who’s this?” he asked.

“That’s Shikamaru Nara,” replied Temari.  “He’s a friend from the Hidden Leaf.”

Hiroki sized Shikamaru up as he would a competitor, looking at him top to bottom.  Temari saw Shikamaru arch one eyebrow skeptically, practically baiting the kid.

Hiroki looked back to Temari.  “A friend, you say?”

Temari crossed her arms.  “Yeah.”

“Huh,” Hiroki grunted, unconvinced.  “Well,” he said with a tone of finality, “Yumi, we should be going.  Mom and Dad will be looking for us.”  He grabbed Yumi’s hand perhaps more forcefully than he would have a few moments ago and nodded to each of them in turn.  “Bye Kankuro Sensei, Temari.”  He paused for a moment before acknowledging Shikamaru.  “Temari’s _friend_ ,” he finished.

The children walked away quickly.  Yumi looked back apologetically, but allowed her brother to pull her along anyway.  Temari waved pleasantly and she saw Yumi smile before she turned back around.  Temari felt her heart swell with pride and affection.  She was looking forward to class on Monday.  Yumi seemed really motivated.  And speaking of motivation…

“Kankuro,” she said as the trio began walking again, “why did Hiroki look at me when you mentioned ‘motivation’?”

Kankuro coughed into his closed fist, not bothering to hide his discomfort.  “Wow, my leg is hurting all of a sudden,” he said, trying to change the subject.

“KANKURO!” Temari shouted.

“All right!” Kankuro yelled back.  “I promised Hiroki that…” he trailed off, reluctant to finish.

“Speak up, bro.  I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I promised Hiroki that if he aced his next physical exam he could go out for dinner with you.”

Temari stopped dead in her tracks.  “You did _what_?!”

“Well he was struggling, so I thought that if I just gave him a goal he’d…y’know…do better.”

Temari was aghast, but thankfully not lost for words.  “Well don’t encourage him!  You realize he’s brought me flowers before.  He saw me in the Academy library one day and he asked me if I went there often.  This boy does _not_ need further motivation.”

“But don’t girls think all that shit is cute, or whatever?”

“Not if the boy is ten, Kankuro.”

“Oh.  Well.”

“See, you don’t have to deal with these stupid Schoolgirl crushes, ‘cause you look like some sort of scary kabuki cat man with a puppet fetish.  But if you did, you would understand.”

Kankuro’s mouth gaped, genuinely offended.  “Hey—this is _traditional puppetmaster clothing_.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Fine.  I’ll let that comment slide, but _please_ will you do this _one_ thing for me?  I already promised him, and he’s doing a lot better.”

Temari pursed her lips and crossed her arms tighter across her chest, tapping her fingers against her arm, irritated.  Finally, she sighed.  “Did you say anything about him going to dinner _alone_ with me?”

“Really?  That’s the deal breaker?”

“Did you say it or not, Kankuro?”

“No.  I never specified.”

“Fine.  Then I’ll do it, but Nara’s coming with me.”

Shikamaru jumped, clearly unhappy with being dragged into the negotiations.  He waved his hands in front of him as if fending off some sort of spastic insect.  “No, guys, don’t bring me into whatever…this…is.”

But Kankuro was tapping his chin contemplatively.  “No, actually, that’s a decent idea.  You can still hold up my end of the deal, but then Hiroki won’t be under any illusions.  I like it.  So,” he said, turning to Shikamaru, “you’ll do it, right?”

Shikamaru’s mouth opened comically, making him look somewhat what like a fish out of water.  Temari giggled.  Only in rare moments did she get to see Shikamaru look like an idiot, but when she did, it was absolutely priceless. 

Shikamaru’s mouth closed abruptly, his teeth clacking together loudly.  He looked desperately back and forth between Temari and Kankuro, looking for some way out of his predicament, but evidently didn’t see what he’d hoped reflected in their eyes.  Temari bet they looked downright desperate. 

Shikamaru cleared his throat.  “I…I guess,” he shrugged.

* * *

Temari and Kankuro broke into identical face-splitting grins.  Shikamaru marveled at the striking resemblance between the two—he’d never really thought they looked like siblings.  And he supposed that, given Temari’s story from the previous night, they were only half-siblings, so the disparities were understandable, but seeing them like this, it was shockingly obvious. 

Kankuro stepped closer to him, and Shikamaru saw the mischievous twinkle in his eyes that he’d become so accustomed to seeing in Temari’s.  “Temari,” Kankuro started, “call Haru and tell him it’s over; I’ve found a new best friend.”  He raised one large hand and clapped Shikamaru good-naturedly on the shoulder.

But it was the shoulder that had recently received seven stitches. 

“ _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!_ ” Shikamaru cried before he could stop himself.

Kankuro jumped about a foot in the air.  “What the hell?!” he panicked.  “What’d I do?”

“ _Nothing! I’m fine_ ,” hissed Shikamaru between his teeth, doubled over in pain.  _Oh, sweet mother of God, it fucking BURNS,_ he thought, breathing hard.  _Why does it have to burn?  It hurt enough when I was getting them; why does it have to hurt so much AFTER?_

Temari rushed forward unconsciously to help Shikamaru get upright again.  She gently lifted his left arm (the side that wasn’t currently on fire) and placed it across her shoulders.  “He’s got stitches, Kankuro,” she chastised.  “Just be careful, okay?”  Shikamaru braced himself against her heavily, using her as a crutch until he felt he could stand again without passing out.  He then took a couple steps away and focused on getting his breathing back to normal.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know that?” Kankuro demanded.  “Y’know what?  Whatever.  Don’t even answer that.  But _I_ have stitches too, you know,” he said pointedly, trying to diffuse the tension.  “So…watch out.”

Temari snorted.  “Yeah, well I don’t think there’s much danger of someone ‘accidentally’ touching your inner thigh, so…”

“And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“I mean that girls think you’re a scary kabuki cat man!”

“Hey,” he laughed heartily, “I know I said I’d let that slide the first time, but doesn’t mean you’re allowed to keep saying it.”

Temari winked exaggeratedly.  “Just try to stop me.”

Kankuro shook his head, laying his chiding behavior on thick.  Shikamaru could tell just by looking at them that they couldn’t stay mad at each other.  They were like dream siblings; exactly what he’d want if he weren’t an only child.  They didn’t have to try to get along.  They just functioned as a unit, feeding off each other to keep things going.  Really, their relationship was very similar to the ones he had with Choji and Ino—very joking, very self-deprecating, very easy.  And thinking of Choji…

 _I hope he won’t be too angry with me,_ he thought.  _I know I was doing what was best, given the circumstances, but…I did abandon them.  I saw an opportunity and I took it, and I didn’t pause to think for a second what they’d do by themselves.  And then they all got hurt as a result.  Gah, I bet Naruto’s gonna let me have it when he sees me; he’s always such a pain after battles.  But I don’t have any idea how Sai and Hinata will react.  I mean, Sai could go all crazy Anbu on me for all I know._

_Why am I getting so angsty over this?  They’re my friends.  They’ll understand._

_But what if they don’t?  What if this is one battle too far?  What if they think I was trying to steal the glory for myself?  Or if I just didn’t care about them?_

_No, that’s ridiculous.  They’re my friends.  They have to understand.  They just have to._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_But what if they don’t?_

“Yo, Shikamaru,” he heard, but the voice was all distant echoes.  He pulled himself from his thoughts, the thoughts that had been eating away at him all day, the thoughts that had been keeping him from talking most of the day.  He blinked a few times, coming to his senses.  He didn’t think he’d been out of it for more than a few moments, but when he looked around, they were out of the intense hustle and bustle of the marketplace.  The streets here were much quieter and the HQ building was looking much larger than it had just a few minutes ago.  He jerked his head around to Kankuro, who was looking at him with a bemused, yet somewhat concerned, expression.  “You okay?  You were pretty zoned out there.”

Shikamaru shook his head to clear it, rubbing savagely at his eyes.  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

He heard some muffled words in a higher voice, no doubt Temari whispering to Kankuro all the shit that’s been going on in his brain for the past day, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.  He was positive Kankuro was going to ask him about it, make him talk about it again, but he was wrong.  Kankuro just took the news silently, waiting for a couple beats, and then finally opened his mouth and said the last thing Shikamaru had possibly thought he would.

“So how’s your love life going, over in the Leaf?” he asked nonchalantly.  “You’ve heard how we’re doing—the only dates my sister’s getting are with ten-year-olds and apparently I’m The Scary Kabuki Cat Man—but what’s up with you?  You put the moves on that hot blonde yet?”

Shikamaru was rather taken aback, in more ways than one, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Temari make a baffled expression eerily similar to the one he was sure he was making.  “You mean Ino?”

“She was the one at the Chunin exams, right?  The one who went all crazy and hacked her hair off?”

“Um…yeah.”

“ _Damn_ , she was fine.  You tapped that yet?”

“No, man, don’t be an idiot.  She’s like my sister.”

“Oh.  Well then, you wouldn’t mind putting in a good word for me?” he asked, grinning like the idiot Shikamaru had just accused him of being.

Temari angrily slapped Kankuro in the chest, causing his smile to falter momentarily, but he regained composure quickly.  “What?  It’s just a question,” he defended, turning his attention back to Shikamaru.  “But seriously, a relatively handsome dude like yourself has to have a girlfriend.”

Shikamaru stuck his hands into his pockets, burrowing them deep.  He wasn’t particularly enamored of the direction this conversation was taking.  “I know what you’re trying to do, you know.”

“Oh, yeah?  What’s that?” asked Kankuro, batting his eyelashes in an over-the-top show of innocence.

“Take my mind off things, distract me ‘cause I’ve been such a head case lately.  And maybe if we were doing this later I’d be a little less high-strung, but I can tell you right now this isn’t gonna work.”

“Can’t hurt, can it?”

Shikamaru shrugged.  “Guess not.”

“Then c’mon!  Give us all the dirty details.”

“Heh,” Shikamaru scoffed.  “If only I _had_ dirty details.  I’ve gone out with this girl Shiho a couple times,” he admitted, remembering the cagey blonde girl with the thick glasses.  She was a really intelligent girl, a worker in the Cipher division, a kunoichi who let her brain do the talking and steered clear of the battlefield, which was why he’d said yes when she’d asked him out, but there’d never really been anything between them.  “I mean, she’s sweet and all, but I think she was a little more into it than I was.”

“Oh, that’s so rough man,” sympathized Kankuro sarcastically.  “I just hate that, when chicks like you so much they lose their appeal.  I mean, it must _suck_ to have some beautiful woman draped all over you, desperate to have you fuck them senseless.  Seriously.  I do not envy your pitiable position, my friend.”

Temari flashed Kankuro another indignant glare, and Shikamaru was surprised when Kankuro didn’t flinch, or even take notice.  Glares like that could sear into most things, leave permanent scars.  Temari’s glares in particular.  “God, Kankuro, you’re worse than that doctor, I swear,” she said.  “Why must I spend my days surrounded by sexist pigs?”

Shikamaru laughed.  “Well I can assure you our dates were nothing like that.  It was more like us sitting across from each other in a restaurant and her blushing too much to talk.  Or eat.  It was really awkward, actually.”

“Oh.  Well that actually does suck,” said Kankuro blatantly.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Here we are,” interjected Temari suddenly.  Shikamaru looked around, stunned.  They’d actually managed to distract him. Amazing.  He’d arrived at HQ without having a panic attack.

They passed through the doorway of the imposing stone building into the shade, and it was only then that Shikamaru processed how hot it had gotten.  He had no idea how Kankuro wasn’t standing in a puddle of his own sweat, having just walked a couple miles in direct sunlight while wearing a hooded, black, long-sleeved uniform, but he must just be used to the heat.  Shikamaru rolled his neck, exposing it to the cool air, relishing the biting sensation of that air on the sweat-soaked tendrils of hair at the base of his skull.  They entered a long hallway and soon hung an abrupt left up a narrow staircase which clearly didn’t lead to a part of the building that was used frequently.  There wasn’t enough room for two of them to comfortably walk side by side, so they fell into a single-file line, with Temari in the lead and Kankuro bringing up the rear, limping along behind them.  Temari turned her head slightly and explained, “Their guest quarters should be on the third level.  We’re almost there.”

Shikamaru felt his eyebrows inching closer together as the worry set in anew, and as if sensing it, Temari said, “And quit worrying so much.  You’ll be fine.”

Shikamaru hoped so.  He really did.  He knew logically that it did him no good whatsoever to hope, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

They reached the third story landing and Shikamaru found himself standing in a communal living room-type area, with a long couch, a loveseat, a couple armchairs, a small kitchen, and a counter with stools.  There were three doors leading off in different directions, and Shikamaru assumed that they led to bedrooms.  Before he could really take anything else in, however, there was a loud cry of “ _SHIKAMARU!”_ and Shikamaru was nearly bowled over by an incredible force.  He had just quick enough reactions to take in the long brown hair and identify the force as Choji before the pain arrived.

His best friend’s hug pulled nauseatingly at his stitches and he spat, “ _Choji, getoffgetoffgetoff_ ,” through gritted teeth, determined not to screech like a madman like he had earlier.

Choji quickly released his vise-like grip, eyeing Shikamaru up and down with uncensored concern written all over his face.  “Where’ve you _been_ , man?  I’ve been so worried about you!  We asked about you when the hospital let us go this morning, but the lady at the desk said she didn’t have any record of you and I thought…” Choji trailed off as he sniffled.  He looked like he was a few words away from a total emotional breakdown.  His eyes were already red and puffy as it was; Shikamaru didn’t want to make this any more dramatic than it absolutely had to be.

“But it’s alright, Choji.  I’m fine.  Just needed a few stitches.”

“Fifteen,” muttered Temari under her breath.  “Hardly a few.”

“ _But that doesn’t matter_ ,” stressed Shikamaru, talking over her.  “I’m fine now.”

He noticed for the first time the cast on his best friend’s arm.  “What happened to you?”

Choji glanced down at his injury as if he’d forgotten it was there.  Knowing him, he probably had.  “Oh.  This Stone Ninja caught me off guard with a Mud Wall and I didn’t get my hand out of the way in time.”  He mimed breaking something as best he could with his limited arm mobility and made a sharp _Tch!_ with his tongue.  “Broken wrist.”  He stared contemplatively at the ground for moment, but then his face lit up as he was struck with a question.  “But hey,” he began.  “What happened to you during the battle?  I lost track of you after I threw you, and then there were all those explosions, and I thought you’d gotten caught in one or something, ‘cause I didn’t see you again after that.”

“Actually, I set off the explosives.  I was up on the wall.”

“Seriously?  _That_ was your big plan?  Fucking _genius_ , man!  You got a horde of crazy Mist Nin off my back—you _decimated_ that army.  Wait, so how’d you get hurt?”

“He neglected to mention the bit where he got hit by enemy shuriken, electrocuted, and would have fallen to his untimely death had I not heroically saved him,” Temari rattled off stoically.

Choji gaped.  Everyone else stared.

“What?” Temari demanded.  “It’s true.”

There was a soft clicking sound as one of the bedroom doors opened and Naruto tip-toed out backwards, delicately closing the door.  With his back still toward the silent group, he raised a hand to his face and started massaging the bridge of his nose.  “Choji,” he said softly, “Hinata finally fell asleep.”  He turned and started trudging toward the center of the room, his eyes heavily hooded with exhaustion.  He had a sizeable purple lump on his right temple and a split lip, Shikamaru noted, but otherwise he appeared to be fine.  His obnoxious orange tracksuit was fairly thoroughly covered with dirt and was worn away almost entirely in some places, but that was nothing that couldn’t be fixed.  Shikamaru found himself letting out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.  “Those pain meds are doing a number on her,” Naruto continued, oblivious to the extra company.  “She kept telling one of the pillows she was in love with it.  And then she kept poking me in the nose and giggling like some sort of crazy person.”

Finally, he looked up from the floor, sensing that he and Choji weren’t the only people in the room.  It took him a few moments to process what he was seeing, but when he finally understood, his exhausted, sagging face transformed rapidly into a lopsided grin, his eyes sparkling with uncensored enthusiasm.  “Hey, Shikamaru!” he said loudly before remembering that Hinata was sleeping.  He glanced guiltily over his shoulder, but quickly became distracted by the prospect of a new conversation.  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he gushed.  “Choji was freaking out.  He was getting to be a real pain in the ass.”

Choji shot him a poisonous glare.  “Oh, _I_ was a pain in the ass?  Who was the one stomping around the living room all morning, keeping the rest of us from sleeping?  ‘Cause I don’t personally remember doing that.”

“Hey—I had a headache.  I couldn’t sleep.”

“So because you couldn’t sleep, the rest of us weren’t allowed to either?”

“Guys!” Shikamaru interjected.  “Quit it.”

Choji and Naruto visibly released the tension in their bodies and squinted down at the ground, mollified.  “Sorry, Shikamaru,” they said in unison.

“It’s alright,” he replied, amused by their quick reaction.  It usually took a lot more effort on his part to break up the arguments Naruto has a habit of starting, but for whatever reason, today was an exception.  If Shikamaru could rely on his hunches with any sort of accuracy, and he usually could, he pinned this down to sleep deprivation.  He couldn’t help but sympathize—he hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous night either.  He’d spent most of the night tossing and turning in Temari’s bed, unable to find a position that didn’t stress his stitches, and unable to keep his nagging inner voice at bay.  There is no greater enemy to a man than that man’s own mind, something Shikamaru knew from experience—in his opinion far too much experience for a boy of a mere sixteen years of age.  He knew it was a sign of being a poor ninja to become so preoccupied with would-a-could-a-should-a’s, but he just couldn’t seem to make it stop.  But that wasn’t all—then there was just the sheer weirdness of sleeping in a girl’s bed.  It’s not like he’d gotten, like, horny or anything, but it was weird how he could tell it belonged to a girl.  Not just because he’d been told; there was something different about it.  He thought it had something to do with the smell.  In his bed at home, he’d never noticed any sort of odor, but this bed had _smelled_ like Temari.  Fabric softener, a fruity aroma from her shampoo, an undertone of sweat, and—wait, why did he even know what Temari smelled like?  He’d never sat down and considered the components of her scent before (that sounded like such a pain), so how did he just _know_?  Who did he think he was, Kiba?

Shikamaru was really starting to hate his brain.

“So what’s up with Hinata?” he asked, bringing his attention back to the conversation at hand.  “Is she okay?”

Naruto raised a hand to scratch the back of his head, mussing his filthy yellow hair in the process.  “Yeah, she’s fine.  Or she will be.  She got a cast on her broken leg, they gave her crutches and everything.  She had a little internal bleeding, but they stopped it.  But apparently her leg was broken really bad, so they gave her all these crazy pain meds when they were snapping things back into place, and they’re taking _forever_ to wear off.”

Shikamaru nodded.  “She probably just needs to sleep them off.  Hopefully she’ll be back to her old self by tonight.  Where’s Sai, by the way?”

Naruto shot a sideways glance at Choji and they both rolled their eyes.  “Oh, he’s in his room, sulking,” explained Choji, nodding at the door opposite Hinata’s. 

“He wound up with a couple cracked ribs and some face stitches,” continued Naruto, “and he feels that, quote, ‘his injuries hindered the effectiveness of the operation,’ so he’s in there angsting over his paint brush.  Fucking drama queen.”

“Sai, a drama queen?  I don’t think we’re talking about the same guy.”

“I’m telling you, man, the guy has actual, like, emotions and shit.  You didn’t see him earlier, but he totally does,” Naruto blathered, a gossipy tone slinking into his voice.

Shikamaru felt a warm surge in his chest as he realized how glad he was to be back in the company of his friends.  As much as he’d worried for their wellbeing, he’d missed them just as much for selfish reasons.  Since he’d avenged Asuma’s death, he hadn’t spent a great deal of time alone, afraid of being left to the mercy of his own thoughts (which seemed to be turning into a recurring theme in his life, as of late), and one of his friends had always been by his side.  Everyone had been there for him—more often than not Choji, but sometimes Ino, Naruto, Neji, Kiba, Tenten, and sometimes even Lee, whose overbearing enthusiasm was strangely comforting.  It had gotten to the point where Shikamaru didn’t feel whole without his friends, but now that they were back together, the tremendous weight that had been crushing down on him had been lifted and everything felt good again and—

The feeling of a hand on his uninjured shoulder removed him from his thoughts.  He whipped his head around to see Temari, who was giving him a small, sad smile, as if she’d just seen every pathetic thought that had passed through his mind.  “I’ll leave you guys to catch up, then,” she murmured.  “I’m gonna see if I can find Gaara.”

“Okay.  See you later?”

“Yeah.”

She and Kankuro turned and left the room, waving over their shoulders.  As soon as they were gone, Naruto sprouted a devilish grin and focused his full attention on Shikamaru.

“Dude, I hadn’t even noticed your girlfriend.  Is that why we didn’t see you last night?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Shikamaru sighed.  It was always the same with Naruto.  He’s a great friend, but he’s a genuine, bona-fide idiot most of the time.  “Naruto, we’ve had this conversation before.  She isn’t my girlfriend.”

“When have we ever had this conversation before?”

“The last time you asked me if she was my girlfriend.”

“I don’t remember that at all.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“But really, dude, where were you last night?  ‘Cause you sure as hell weren’t at the hospital.  I checked.”

Shikamaru rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, not meeting Naruto’s eyes as he admitted, “I was at Temari’s apartment.”

Naruto leaped into the air, pumping his fist like he’d just won the lottery, or better yet, a year of free ramen from Ichiraku’s.  “I knew it!”

“No, you idiot, it wasn’t like that.”  Naruto abruptly stopped celebrating when he heard the tone of Shikamaru’s voice.  “She was giving me—”

“Head?” Choji joked.

“—stitches,” Shikamaru finished loudly, as if he could overpower their innuendo with sheer volume.  “Honestly, why are you guys so determined that we’re together?  She’s completely insane; she scares the shit out of me.  When have you ever had any reason to think that we can even tolerate being in each other’s presence?”

Naruto and Choji turned to each other, as if they were unable to come up with a good reason by themselves and were hoping that the other had an answer.  Apparently they didn’t have any luck.

“I mean, you do always get stuck together,” Choji shrugged, pulling at strings.

“Yeah, why is that?  Does Tsunade hate me or something?” 

“Nah, buddy.  I think the universe just likes laughing at you.”

* * *

Temari and Kankuro rounded the corner into the main Office hallway and nearly plowed straight into Gaara.

“Oh!” Temari cried.  “Gaara, I’ve been looking for you.  I wanted to talk to you about—”

“About the rogue army.  Yes, I was just about to go off looking for you two.”  Gaara checked conspiratorially over his shoulders to check that no one was watching them and then ushered his siblings into the nearest empty office.  He shut the door behind them and took a moment to compose himself before turning to face them. 

Temari stepped forward and placed a hand on her brother’s arm.  “What’s wrong, Gaara?  What’s with all the secrecy?”

“I just don’t want to cause a panic,” Gaara whispered.

“Spit it out, bro,” Kankuro barked harshly.  “What the hell’s going on?”

Gaara took a deep breath and then launched into his story, looking at the ground with his eyebrow-less forehead wrinkled in worry all the while.  “Temari, do you remember yesterday, when you told me to stay at the Messenger Corp?  Well I’d already gone to investigate the battle; I’d only gone to the Messenger Corp because I’d seen you run off and I wanted to see what you were up to.  But I’d seen the army.  I knew that it was made up of missing Nin from the Stone, Mist, and Cloud villages, so while I was with the Messengers anyway, I sent messages to the Tsuchikage, Mizukage, and Raikage asking them what was going on.  I received their replies a few minutes ago.”  He paused and took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he exhaled.  “All three of them said that there had been a great deal of discord in their villages ever since the Sand and Leaf became allies.  Apparently people have been under the impression that we were going to use our newfound unified power to begin some sort of imperialist regime, and a lot of Shinobi abandoned their villages when the Kages refused to take countermeasures against our alliance.”

“So that’s the army,” Kankuro simplified.  “All the guys who defected.”

“But why should that surprise us?” asked Temari.  “Making friends with the Leaf—we were bound to make a few enemies, too.”

“I haven’t gotten to the bad part,” said Gaara. 

“Oh, so that was the _good_ news,” Kankuro scoffed.  “Yeah, that seems about right.”

“Shut up, Kankuro,” shot Temari.  “Let Gaara talk.”

Gaara let the silence stretch out for a few agonizing moments, and then said the last thing Temari was expecting.  “Temari, tell me what you thought of the battle yesterday.”

Temari opened and closed her mouth dumbly a few times before thinking of anything to say.  “Um…well…it was hard, I guess.  They were good, and there were a lot of them, so…”

“But were they really that good?  Or were you just so outnumbered you didn’t have time to notice that they were novices?”

Temari gaped.  “I…no—”

“No, he’s right,” interrupted Kankuro.  “They were chumps.  Most of them were definitely no higher than Genin level.  The only reason we came out so bad was that there were so many of them.”

“Exactly,” said Gaara.  “I watched enough of the battle to observe that.  And not only were they relatively unskilled ninja, but the attack was far too straightforward.  An army of that size could easily have stormed the village, as I think was their intent, if they’d just put some real planning into it.  But as it was, they just waged a head-on battle for nearly an entire day and made no headway.”

“Well, they’re all dead now,” began Temari, “so we’re out of the danger zone, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Gaara, still staring holes into the floor.  “There were only, what?  Fifteen hundred ninja in that army?”

Temari glanced at Kankuro and their eyes met, conferring.  “Yeah,” they answered simultaneously. 

“The missing-nin counts from the three villages totaled more than two thousand.”

Temari gaped as she finally realized what her little brother was hinting at, why he’d been so reluctant to have people overhear their conversation.  “You think that battle was just a diversion, don’t you.”  It wasn’t a question.

Gaara dipped his chin into his chest, still keeping his gaze firmly locked on the floor.  “I don’t know what their endgame is,” admitted Gaara, “but I’m positive that no army of that size would attack with a plan that seems this hastily thrown together.”

Kankuro’s head was whipping back and forth between the somber Gaara and the gaping Temari, still struggling to come to terms with everything that had just been said.  “So, you’re saying…”

“Yes, this is part of something bigger,” Gaara said, finally looking up and meeting Temari’s and Kankuro’s eyes in turn.  “I fear this is only the beginning.”


	4. Phase Two

“Humanity does not ask us to be happy.  It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.”—Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

* * *

**Chapter 4: Phase Two**

“I fear this is only the beginning,” rasped Gaara softly, his icy blue eyes holding a newfound intensity that Temari had never seen in them before.  When she met her little brother’s gaze, she usually found cold determination, or bloodlust, or occasionally even something approaching contentment.  But what she saw just then was something she’d never suspected she’d see from Gaara.  She could have sworn he looked afraid.

She supposed that the fear was warranted, but still.  Her brother was always the strong one, the invincible one.  He was the one with the Ultimate Defense; he couldn’t be harmed, right?  But clearly this rogue army had him quite shaken.  In the past, Gaara had always been very cold and heartless, or at least he had been until after the Sand’s attack on the Leaf during the Chunin Exams three years ago.  After that, he was much more humble, softer around the edges but still cold, and very reluctant to show emotion to anyone, friend or foe, for fear that it would make him appear weak.  Frankly, Temari was surprised that he was betraying this much emotion at present.  But thinking back, this was his first real crisis in which he’d had to take charge since the Akatsuki’s attack, and he hadn’t been acknowledged by many of the villagers until he’d stepped in to protect them from the explosives, so this had the added significance of being the first crisis since Gaara had earned the village’s whole-hearted trust and respect.  Being Kazekage, and consequentially Commander-In-Chief, was turning out to be a rather exciting job for the sixteen-year-old.  So exciting, in fact, that Temari could physically see the stress eating away at him.  It pained her to see people like this, but who was she to talk?  If she were honest, she was just about as stressed—she’d been through too much in the past day not to be.  She’d partaken in a lengthy battle, witnessed the maiming of her comrades, played doctor, gotten a cruddy night of ache-inducing couch-sleep, had a fight inside a hospital (of all places), reunited Shikamaru with his friends, and now on top of all that she was receiving bad news.  It was too much, even given that she’d come out of the battle uninjured.  She couldn’t even imagine how those who hadn’t been so lucky were faring.

Temari shot a glance at Kankuro, hoping to find her answer.  His rarely serious face was frozen in a perfect caricature of shock, eyes wide and glassy, mouth gaping mindlessly.  Kankuro, not exactly well known for being a strategist, was clearly having a bit of trouble grasping Gaara’s implications.  Suddenly, he blinked, setting his perfect tableau in motion as he pumped himself up to ask questions they already knew the answers to.  “Wait, so…you think they’re planning another attack?”

“I’m certain,” replied Gaara somberly.

“From the _inside_?” Kankuro emphasized, desperately hoping the answer was no. 

It wasn’t.  Gaara and Temari’s silence said as much.

“So they’re gonna infiltrate,” he stated plainly.  “No big deal.  We can just heighten security proceedings at the gate, right?  That’ll help weed out suspicious—”

“No, that won’t work,” Temari interjected, starting to pace.  She glided back and forth across the tiny room, slowly at first, but picking up speed as the gears in her brain started turning.  “If they’re planning anything, they’ll already be in the village.  They probably got here before the battle.”  She turned back to Gaara.  “In their letters, did any of the Kages mention when all the rogues began to leave?”

“The Mizukage said that she’d first noticed the pattern about a year ago, but that it had probably been going on for some time undetected.  The others didn’t say anything.”

“But let’s assume that it’s the same for the Stone and Cloud villages.  So this army has probably been forming for, what?  Maybe eighteen months?”

Kankuro shrugged.  “Seems reasonable.”

“So this invasion has probably been planned for about a year.  That’s tons of time to send an advance squad.  They probably filtered in one by one for months without us noticing, without us suspecting there would ever even be something _to_ notice, waiting for the big army to give the signal to start Phase Two.”

She stopped abruptly, mid-pace, pulling at straws.  She was a decent strategist, everyone said so, so she should be able to come up with some sort of countermeasure, but for that she needed facts, data nobody had, or would probably ever have.  She was stuck in the undesirable position of formulating a plan with no idea what exactly she was facing.  Oh, well.

She addressed Gaara, forcing a calm tone into her voice.  “We’ll have to play this by ear.  We don’t have any information on our enemy, so there’s absolutely no way to take preventative measures, except for being on heightened alert.”  She paused as something occurred to her.  “But,” she started, considering her options before continuing.  “It’s in our best interests not to let on that we know any of this.  If these rogues, wherever they are, believe that we haven’t caught onto their little scheme, they’ll be less careful, y’know?  Clumsier.  It’ll be easier for us to catch them that way.”

“Yeah,” interjected Kankuro, clearly intending to contest Temari, “but that also means that we can’t be too obvious when we’re spying around.  We can’t ask the whole army to be in on this—it’d be too noticeable and most of them’ll still be in the hospital after yesterday.  So if we do things your way, we’ll be doing it with like, no manpower and it’ll be that much _harder_ for us to catch the fuckers.”

“No, Kankuro,” Gaara murmured in that certain way that seemed specifically manufactured to make people listen.  “Temari’s right.  Our only hope is to catch them off guard.”

Temari shot a triumphant glance at Kankuro, crossing her arms and shrugging one shoulder jauntily.  She almost smiled.  Almost, but not quite.  She didn’t think smiling would be an appropriate reaction just then.

“Well…” Kankuro trailed off, struggling for a way to finish the sentence.  “We have to tell someone.  It can’t be us against the world.  We’re just three guys—”

Temari shot him a hard look.

“—fine.  Two guys and a lady.  But the fact remains that we can’t do much by ourselves.  We should tell the High Council, at least.”

“Are you joking?  That’s the last thing we should do.  Those old geezers are insufferable blabbermouths,” Temari seethed.  “And although I’ll admit that only—what?  Three of them?—have been appointed to the council within the past year, but every man on that council has his own network, and they’ll blab to someone in that network who’ll tell everyone in the network, and we have to assume that somewhere on that network, there will be an infiltrator.  Until we can confirm someone’s innocence, everyone has to be treated as an enemy.  That’s like, the first thing we teach the newbies at the academy.”  If possible, Temari’s glare became even more pointed and sharp.  “Isn’t that right, _Kankuro Sensei_?”

Kankuro jerked his head angrily, knowing resistance was futile, but unwilling to abandon his conviction.  “Well, can we tell Baki Sensei, at least?  His hands are clean in this mess, and he’s the only tight-lipped one on the council.”

Temari envisioned her Sensei, tall and stoic, sporting his perpetual scowl, face half-covered by the white cloth dangling from his headband.  Then she pictured that rarest of smiles, the one he’d graced her with after her promotion, and she felt the tension in her body melt away to be replaced by serenity.  Kankuro was right.  Baki could be trusted.  “Alright,” she conceded.  “We can tell Baki, but pulling in anyone else is too much of a risk.  Other than that, we’re on our own.”

“Whatever,” grunted Kankuro.  “But while we’re on the subject, we should probably send something to the Hokage explaining everything.  If this army is really targeting both the Sand and the Leaf, it’s the least we can do to warn them that something might be coming their way.”

Temari nearly slapped herself.  How had she forgotten so quickly?  The Leaf!  There were five allies sitting a few floors below her who would be a tremendous help.  She hoped Shikamaru would have some sort of brilliant plan to sort out this whole mess, maybe even help out his own village in case anything was going on there.  And speaking of helping the leaf…

“We definitely have to inform them,” she began, “but just sending a message is too risky.  I’ll consult Nara and see what he thinks, but if we really want to keep this a secret, we’ll have to send someone there to tell the Hokage in person.”

“Good point,” Gaara admitted, just as Kankuro let out an angry squeak, expressing without words his outrage at the prospect of sacrificing manpower for secrecy once more.

“Kankuro, it’s the only way this is going to work,” consoled Temari, growing a bit impatient with her little brother’s immaturity and general ineptitude.

“ _Whatever_ ,” Kankuro muttered under his breath, crossing his arms and pouting like a little girl being told that, no, she couldn’t have a pony.

Temari, despite her emotional discipline, let out a quiet chuckle at that face.  Kankuro made it somewhat frequently, and it was just as funny every time.  “Alright,” Temari said authoritatively, stifling her laughter.  “So I’ll go tell Nara and the rest about what we’ve figured out, see if he has any ideas.  Gaara,” she said, turning to him, “you go tell Baki.  Kankuro,” she said louder, as she was nearly certain her brother was already losing interest in the conversation.  Sure enough, he jerked his head at the sound of his name, as if he’d been dozing off while standing up.  His eyes were now wide, exaggeratedly aware.  Temari noticed for the first time the dark circles beneath them and decided to take pity on him.  “You go home, rest up.”

Kankuro’s face lit up at the prospect of going home, of plopping onto his bed and burrowing his aching body into the soft sheets until dinnertime, snoring away the day’s troubles.  He raised a single hand to his forehead and gave a wild salute.  “Yes, sir!” he shouted, making his way to the door.

Temari cringed at the ‘sir’.  “Do you do that just to get on my nerves, or are you just stupid?”

Kankuro wiggled his fingers over his shoulder in a cheerful _goodbye_ gesture.  “Pissing you off is one of the few joys I have in life, big sis.”

“You suck.”

“Love you, too,” he called faintly from his position halfway down the hall.  Temari poked her head out the door and watched him round the corner into the stairwell, envying him more and more with every step.  She wished she could go to bed that very second, just crawl between the sheets and cease her worrying, but she knew she couldn’t.  As always, she had work to do.

* * *

A frenzy began in the guest quarters as the sun started its lazy descent from its peak in the sky.  Noon had come and gone, but Naruto’s stomach had begun grumbling like clockwork as time ticked away.  He was currently feverishly opening and closing every cupboard door in their tiny kitchen on a noisy quest for something, _anything_ , tasty to eat.  And Shikamaru had to listen to him.

“How does he have this much energy after yesterday?” he asked Choji quietly over the incessant slamming and occasional yell coming from Naruto’s direction.  Shikamaru was draped over the couch with his hands behind his head, positioned very precisely, so as not to aggravate his stitches.  It wasn’t the most comfortable of positions, but all he’d really wanted to do since waking up that morning was lie down.

“I wish I knew,” Choji admitted.  “If anyone ever figures out how he heals so fast…I don’t really know how to finish that thought.  But you get what I’m saying.  It’s seriously weird.  You should have seen him this morning—his face was almost completely purple, nothing but bruises—and now, if it weren’t for all the dirt on his clothes, you wouldn’t even be able to tell he’d been part of the battle.”  Choji waved his cast-adorned arm around, wincing slightly.  “I wish the same could be said for me.”

“GAAAAAAAH!” Naruto cried from the kitchen.  “Where is the _FOOD_?”

There was a faint clicking sound as one of the bedroom doors opened and Sai emerged.  He looked, if possible, a bit more unhealthily gray than usual, his right eyebrow slightly swollen where he’d needed stitches.  There was a beige gauze bandage wrapped tightly around his ribcage, poking out from underneath his shirt.  Actually, Shikamaru felt like calling Sai’s garment (whatever it was) a shirt was doing a severe injustice to shirts, as it only covered the top half of his abdomen, but he couldn’t think of a better word.  The bandage was shockingly bright in contrast to his dull skin and uniform.  As he walked, he stood incredibly straight, as if afraid that poor posture would tweak his cracked ribs.  His face betrayed no emotion, no pain (as usual), although Shikamaru was sure that his ribs must be giving him quite a bit of discomfort. 

Shikamaru never really knew what to say to Sai.  After all, the first time he’d met the guy, Sai had been attacking him for the express purpose of ‘finding out if he had any balls,’ as Naruto had put it.  So they’d never exactly been friends—he wasn’t sure it was possible to be friends with a drone like Sai—and he had no idea how best to communicate with him, so Shikamaru went for the obvious.  “Hey, Sai,” he said tentatively.  “Feeling alright?”

“Yes, Captain,” he responded without inflection.  “Fine.  I merely emerged from my room to inform you that you are being quite loud, and that if this noise level continues, you may awaken The Crazy One.”  He then glanced over at Naruto who, not really heeding Sai’s warning, continued to bang around in the cupboards muttering _food, food, food_ under his breath.  Without taking his eyes off Naruto, Sai continued, “I now realize that I’m quite hungry.”

Sai walked purposefully toward the kitchen, bare feet padding softly along the cool stone floor. 

“The Crazy One?” Shikamaru asked, snorting slightly as he chuckled.

Choji smirked.  “You know how he likes to give nicknames to everybody?  How he thinks it creates like, a stronger friendship or some such shit?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, that’s his name for Hinata.”

“Hinata?” he barked, laughing uncontrollably.  “But she’s gotta be the sanest person I know.”

“No, dude, I thought she was normal, too.  But you never really know anything about a person ‘til you’ve seen them high on pain meds.  There is some weird shit in that girl’s brain.  I can tell you that.  This morning, I was stuck helping Naruto carry her back here—one-handed, I might add—and she was being really loud, which is the exact opposite of how I would usually describe her.  She was like, humming, and she kept pointing up at the sun and giggling like an idiot and then going, ‘Look!  It’s Naruto!’  And then she would reach up and try to tousle his hair, which made it really freaking difficult to carry her.”

“ ** _YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!_** ” shouted Naruto at the top of his lungs, dancing spastically all around the tiny kitchen, forcing Sai to jump into a corner in order to avoid being smacked.  “ ** _I FOUND THE INSTANT RAMEN!_** ”

In a split second, Sai had found a way around Naruto’s flailing limbs and had pressed his body tightly to Naruto’s back, his hand reaching around Naruto’s head to cover his mouth.  “Shhhhhh!” he hissed.  “Do you want to wake her up?”

All four of the boys in the room paused what they were doing for a moment to listen for Hinata’s voice, but they heard nothing and continued with their business.  Naruto’s shocking blue eyes were wide in surprise at Sai’s actions, but he recovered quickly.  A sick, wet sound reached Shikamaru’s ears and out of the corner of his eye he saw Sai recoil wildly from Naruto, crashing noisily into the counter (wincing horribly as he made contact) and holding his hand a fair distance away from his body as it dripped a clear, somewhat gelatinous liquid.  “Naruto!” Sai shrieked indignantly.  Shikamaru achieved a slightly sadistic level of glee when Sai’s face dissolved from its usual stoic expression into a mindlessly outraged one.  _It looks like Choji was right_ , he thought.  _I guess he’s human after all._

“Why did you just lick me?” Sai demanded.

“Well I had to get you off somehow, didn’t I?  And would you quit doing that?  It’s creepy.”

“Doing what?”

“Getting so close to me!”

“But we’re…comrades.  Are we not supposed to be close?  I read in a book once that—”

“I don’t care what you read, Sai, just please don’t get that close to me.”

Naruto marched away to find something he could boil water in to make his ramen, the incessant clanking of pots and pans filling the eerie silence that had descended on the apartment.  Suddenly though, out of the silence came a strong female voice, slightly muffled by a shut door.  “Naruto?” it cried. “Where are you?”

Naruto, at that time buried bellybutton-deep in a cupboard beneath the sink searching for a suitable pan, banged his head painfully on the counter’s edge at the sound of his name.  He stood slowly, rubbing at the back of his head and cursing under his breath. 

“I warned you that you’d wake her up,” Sai lectured in his slightly less monotonous than usual ‘I-told-you-so’ voice.

“Shut up, man.  It was totally _you_ that woke her up.”

“How so?”

“ _Naruto!_ ” he imitated in a high, girlish voice, mocking Sai’s moment of discomposure. 

Sai looked down at the ground, ashamed.  “You have a point,” he admitted. 

Naruto grinned, sloppy and lopsided and clapped Sai on the shoulder.  “Don’t worry about it, Sai,” he said.  “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”  Sai winced when Naruto’s hand made contact, but looked rather pleased at the same time.  Despite Sai’s newfound array of facial expressions, Shikamaru was still having a rather difficult time reading him. 

“Naruto?!” Hinata cried again, shattering Shikamaru’s introspections.  It turned out Hinata could be quite forceful and insistent when she wanted to be.  The crippling shyness, it appeared, did not carry over to her drugged state.

Naruto gestured behind him in the general direction of the instant ramen.  “Will you take care of that for me?” he asked Sai.  “I’ll try to get Hinata back to sleep.”

Sai bowed somewhat awkwardly, trying to keep his spine perfectly straight so he didn’t upset his wounds.  “Of course.”

Naruto smirked again as he walked past Sai in the direction of Hinata’s room.  “And quit bowing like that.  We’re _comrades_ , remember?”

Sai’s lips quirked into a genuine smile, his eyes twinkling.

Naruto swiftly crossed the room and opened Hinata’s door to an emotional cry of, “Naruto, you’re back!  I love you…”

Shikamaru noticed Sai regress into his trademark fake smile, all joy draining from his eyes.  He didn’t know what to make of it.

Naruto, oblivious, sighed and resignedly replied, “I love you too, Hinata.”  He looked back to Shikamaru and Choji, still in the living room, and rolled his eyes at them before closing the door behind him. 

Shikamaru shook his head.  “He shouldn’t lead her on like that.  She’s totally head-over-heels for him, and he’s shrugging everything she’s saying off like it’s nothing.  He’s gonna confuse her.”

“I don’t think he even knows he’s leading her on.  He thinks she’s joking.”

“How could she possibly be joking?  She nearly faints every time she sees him and now that she’s all drugged up she’s confessing her love to him.  Where is the joke?”

“He’s just really dense when it comes to girls.  A better friend you’ll scarcely find, but a better boyfriend?  That’s another matter.”

Shikamaru glanced over his shoulder back at Sai, who was mindlessly filling a kettle with water to boil for Naruto’s ramen, but gazing in the direction of Hinata’s room with a shocking display of emotion on his face.  When Sai didn’t know someone was looking at him, he didn’t bother to put on the façade Danzo had, no doubt, made him perfect in the Foundation.  Sai looked inconceivably human, not at all the emotionless drone Shikamaru had always thought him to be.  In his eyes, Shikamaru saw bewilderment, sadness, envy, and he even thought he saw longing, but he must have imagined that, right?  It was unnerving nonetheless.

Shikamaru turned back to Choji.  He didn’t want Sai to hear his next question, so he murmured, “So what’s up with Sai and Naruto?  Did something happen?  They’re acting more awkward than usual.”

“I don’t think anything happened.  I think it’s just that Naruto knows him best and Sai’s been trying really hard to be friendly lately and it just…you know…doesn’t come naturally to him.”

Shikamaru allowed himself to sink into the couch cushions, wincing slightly at the pull on his stitches but at the same time relishing the sensation of releasing some of the tension in his muscles.  “Well,” he sighed, “as long as it wasn’t anything bad…”

There was a sharp click as the door to Hinata’s room cracked open once more and Naruto peeked his head around it.  “Yo, Shikamaru,” he called.  “I told her you’re back, and she wants to talk to you.”

Shikamaru heaved himself to his feet.  “Alright,” he grunted.  He trudged the distance to Hinata’s room and Naruto welcomed him, shutting the door behind them.  With three people in the bedroom, it felt horribly cramped.  The walls were the same cinderblock gray as the rest of the apartment, but the room was not nearly as, well…roomy.  It was sparsely furnished, with only a bedside table, a lamp, and a bed (which, Shikamaru noted, was very similar to Temari’s room), but the dimensions were almost comically tiny.  The room couldn’t have been larger than about six or seven feet square, with Hinata’s proportionally miniscule bed taking up the entirety of the far wall and much of the room’s floor space.  Her bed had a harsh-looking metal frame and a barely-there mattress, with a few thin grayish sheets.  There was a single grimy window on the far wall, letting in a shaft of filtered mid-day sun.

Hinata herself was seated on the bed, propped up against her single pillow with excellent posture, her right leg extended out before her, wrapped tightly in a lavender cast that stretched from calf to mid-thigh.  Her right pant leg had been cut short to accommodate the cast.  She had removed her jacket and tossed it to the floor, now wearing only her fishnet undershirt and all but exposing her sizeable breasts.  Shikamaru noticed but wasn’t particularly distracted, however when he looked briefly at Naruto, his sharp blue eyes were locked onto them.  Shikamaru doubted he was capable of looking away.  He smirked to himself.  The fool probably didn’t even realize that the show was entirely for his entertainment.

If Hinata noticed Naruto’s intense fixation, she gave no indication, aside from the fact that her facial expression was perhaps a bit more smug than usual.  Upon noticing Shikamaru, she broke into a face-splitting grin, exposing every one of per pearly whites in a stunning display of beauty.  She really was milking it for all it was worth, Shikamaru thought. 

“Shikamaru!” she cried in a strong, unfamiliar voice with her arms outstretched.  Shikamaru hesitantly stepped forward, understanding that she wanted a hug but unsure it would be the best idea in her current state. 

“Hey, Hinata,” he hedged.  “How’re you feeling?”

“Fantastic!  Like rainbows and sunshine…” she gushed, grabbing Shikamaru and pulling him into a tight hug despite his reluctance.  Shikamaru hissed as she tugged on his stitches.  She didn’t notice.  Instead, she continued hugging him and he felt her breasts squish against his chest.  The sensation was not unpleasant, but he was very unnerved by the whole situation.  The guys had been right—Hinata was most certainly not herself.

 “They fixed me up so fast,” Hinata said, finally releasing Shikamaru.  He painstakingly returned to an upright position, pasting a fake smile across his face as Hinata continued talking.  “They even gave me a purple cast to match my jacket!  Purple!”  She gestured helpfully to her cast, in case Shikamaru couldn’t make the connection of his own volition. 

“Well, you’re certainly…enthusiastic,” Shikamaru stated frankly.

Hinata only giggled in response. 

Shikamaru plunged his hands deep into his pockets, waiting for her to begin some sort of conversation, but she merely looked back and forth between him and Naruto with her twinkling pale eyes, smiling like an idiot.  Finally, Shikamaru cleared his throat.  “Naruto said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Oh, I just wanted to make sure you were all right.  I asked about you last night, but nobody knew where you were.”

“I was at Temari’s apartment.  Nothing to worry about.”

“Ooh, Temari…she’s pretty.  I hope you had fun,” she said.  “Lots and lots of fun…”  She squinted up at him, tilting her head slightly.  “Hehe…you know your head looks like a pineapple?” 

Suddenly, her facial expression changed from gleeful to shocked, and her shoulders hunched visibly.  “I’m hungry,” she stated abruptly, her voice fainter than a few moments ago.  She shifted as if she intended to get out of bed, but before she could move her legs, Naruto was at her side, a hand on each shoulder. 

“No, Hinata,” he whispered, his mouth mere inches from her ear.  “You should stay in bed.  I can bring you something to eat, okay?”

Hinata looked deep into Naruto’s eyes, her face a mask of confusion.  And then, as if the last remnants of the pain meds were leaving her system in a great, sudden wave, she slumped down even further, crossing her arms over her chest protectively, like she’d suddenly remembered the concept of modesty.  Her eyes had lost some of their confident twinkle and there was a noticeable change in her demeanor.  She looked almost scared.  “N—n—Naruto?” she asked quietly, her voice shaking slightly.  She sounded back to normal.  _Thank God,_ Shikamaru thought.  He’d only been with her for about five minutes, but he was starting to get really freaked out by her transformation.  Confident, goofy Hinata was just too weird.  Her timid, genuine counterpart was much easier to deal with.

Shikamaru sighed, realizing from the rising color in her face that Hinata was about to faint, just as she usually did when in close proximity to a certain yellow-haired boy.  He had to do something about that.  “Naruto,” he barked.  “Go make her some food.  I’ll keep her company.”

Naruto stood slowly, nodding slightly in Shikamaru’s direction.  “Right.”

He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.  As soon as he was out of earshot, Hinata turned frantically to Shikamaru.  “Shikamaru, what’s happening to me?” she asked in her breathy voice.

Shikamaru knelt by her bed, getting closer to her level.  This was a technique he’d learned from his father about how to deal with panicky people.  He’d had to use it several times on Ino, but he found that it always worked.  Getting to the same level always eased them—that way, they were neither being talked down to, which could often make them feel as if they were being scolded, nor talked up to, which makes them feel like they are the subjects of high expectations.  As things were, they stood (or rather, crouched and sat) eye-to-eye, and Hinata calmed almost immediately. 

Shikamaru spoke in a low, clear voice, another trick of his dad’s.  “I think you’re finally coming down off your pain medication.  Do you feel like you’re back to normal?”

Hinata picked at the sleeve of her fishnet shirt, her arms still crossed over her chest.  She nodded somberly.

“That’s good.  How much do you remember from the past day or so?”

She blinked slowly, as if she hoped the day’s events would play out behind her eyelids, but apparently she had no such luck.  “N-not much,” she admitted.  “It’s all sort of muddled.”

“That’s okay.  That’s all to be expected.  What _do_ you remember?”

“Umm…” she pondered.  “Well…I remember…nothing, really.  Just the past ten minutes or so.  I’m sorry, by the way.  I—I didn’t mean what I said earlier.  Your head doesn’t look like a pineapple.  I don’t know why I—”

Shikamaru chuckled mildly, cutting her off.  “It’s alright, Hinata.  You don’t have to apologize.”

Hinata nodded, ashamed nonetheless.  She raised a finger from its place on her arm and gestured to a corner of the room, where a lump of fabric sat on the floor.  “Would you mind getting my jacket for me?”

Shikamaru silently fetched the jacket and handed it to her.  She received it graciously, but still refused to uncross her arms.  “Could you turn around for a minute?”

Shikamaru almost rolled his eyes.  _Now_ she cares.  But instead, he just turned around.  He heard the swish of fabric over skin as she slid it on and the sharp _zzzzzzzzzzzzzzip_ of the zipper, which he took as a signal to turn back around.  “Thanks,” she said, tugging at her sleeves.

“No problem,” Shikamaru replied.  They fell into silence, but Shikamaru knew that Hinata had more to say.  He just had to give her time.

A minute or so passed, but ultimately she opened her mouth again.  “I said a lot of weird things, didn’t I?” she asked, her timid voice filled with dread.

Shikamaru looked pointedly at the ground.  “So I’ve been hearing, yeah.”

She took a deep breath.  “Did I say anything about… _him_?”  Her blank eyes were wide, pleading.  She didn’t use Naruto’s name; she didn’t say what she really meant, which was ‘ _Does Naruto know I’m in love with him?’_.  She didn’t need to.  It was all written there, on her face.  For a moment, Shikamaru pitied her, pitied her inability to acknowledge her true feelings to Naruto’s face, pitied her insecurity, pitied her doubt.  But he knew his pity did nothing to help. 

“Don’t worry, Hinata,” he said softly.  “He doesn’t suspect a thing.”

A tiny grin threatened to appear on her face.  She bit her lip to smother it, but not before it reached her eyes.  She was relieved, incredibly so.  She nodded, twiddling her fingers in her lap.  “Th—thanks, Shikamaru,” she stuttered.

Suddenly, he heard voices from beyond the closed door.  One was fairly deep, clearly male, the other somewhat higher, clearly female.  The higher voice was elevated, argumentative.  The deeper voice grew slowly to match it but was abruptly cut off at the same time Shikamaru heard a dull thud and the wall shook with considerable force.  Naruto then came through the door holding a steaming bowl of instant ramen and two chopsticks, looking thoroughly displeased. 

“Food’s ready,” he said at the same time as Shikamaru demanded, “What the hell was that?”

“Oh,” Naruto said, setting the bowl on Hinata’s bedside table.  She picked up the bowl tentatively, muttered a _thank you_ , and began slurping at the noodles.

“Temari’s here,” Naruto said, gesturing to the wall.  “She was asking for you.”

Shikamaru’s face contorted incredulously.  “So why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“She started talking to Sai, so I figured you had some time.”

“Well what was that thud, then?”

“Oh.  Sai tried to give her a nickname.”

Shikamaru had had his mouth open, ready to shout some sort of angry reply, but he shut it abruptly as he understood, his teeth making a sharp click.  “Ah,” he said.  “I bet she didn’t like that.”

“No.  She.  Did.  Not.”

The two boys stood opposite each other silently, the only sound in the room Hinata’s slurping.

After a few seconds, Shikamaru couldn’t stand the silence any more.  “So what was it?”

“Huh?” Naruto responded dumbly.

“The nickname.”

“I dunno.”

Shikamaru quirked an eyebrow at him.  “How do you not know?” he asked.

“I wasn’t paying attention, man.  I was cooking, remember?” he defended, pointing wildly at the ramen.  Hinata widened her eyes, horrified, as if begging him not to bring her precious noodles into the argument.

“Making instant ramen doesn’t qualify as cooking.”

“Whatever.  Just go talk to her.”

Shikamaru shook his head, bemused.  He turned and waved over his shoulder, exiting the room.  He saw Temari just to the left of the door, her eyes aflame, teeth bared.  Sai was pinned against the wall with Temari’s forearm pressed against his neck.  Sai’s expressionless face was turning blue, which Shikamaru knew could not possibly be a good sign.  He hooked an arm through Temari’s and dragged her backwards, away from Sai.  She flashed him a startled look, as if she had not fully processed he was there. 

“What are you doing?!” she demanded.

“Stopping you before you kill one of my squad members,” Shikamaru replied tersely.  Temari jerked her arm from Shikamaru’s grasp and turned until she was walking half a step behind him.  She was putting considerable force behind her footsteps, shaking the floor with every stomp.  She was angry.  No different than usual, really, but Shikamaru hated dealing with angry women.  She was behind him, so he couldn’t see her face, but he could imagine it perfectly.  The flared nostrils, the puckered lips, the widened eyes.  He wasn’t quite sure he knew whether she was still angry with Sai or if she’d transferred her focus to someone else—say, him—but he didn’t want to give her a chance to confirm the thought one way or the other.  In the moment he knew her mouth would likely open to interject some sort of angry retort, he cut her off.  “And I’m sure he said something to deserve a beating; he does that a lot.  But it’s not entirely his fault,” he explained, arriving in the far corner of the apartment, thrusting his fists deep into his pockets, and turning to face her directly.  Sure enough, her mouth was hanging open and her nostrils were wrinkled in horror and disgust.

“So it’s not his fault that he called me a ‘Well-Endowed Spike-Head’?”

Shikamaru snickered.  “ _That’s_ what he called you?” he asked, incredulous.  “That’s pathetic!  How could that possibly make you that angry?”

“He was objectifying me!”

“ _Jeez, you’re such a feminist_ ,” he muttered under his breath before continuing at a normal volume.  “No, he wasn’t—I’m pretty sure he has no idea why you’re offended right now.  He just makes observations about people and then makes them into nicknames ‘cause he read somewhere that doing that is a good way to make friends.”

“And he hasn’t figured out that it doesn’t work yet?”

“Apparently not.”

“And how is ‘Well-Endowed Spike-Head’ a good nickname?  It sucks.”

“I didn’t say they were good.  I just said they were nicknames.  Quit embellishing my words.”  He looked down at his filthy shoes, knowing that what he was about to say was probably going to earn him a slap or two.  “But you have to admit, he’s right.”

Temari tilted her head and narrowed her eyes in that terrifying way of hers, the one where as soon as it hits you, you know you’re in serious trouble.  “Excuse me?”

“Well, I mean…” he began, jerking his head at her chest, where her shirt gave a tiny preview of her cleavage, trying to pass off the gesture as something off-hand and strictly observational, as he thought that was as good a tactic as any to minimize the beating he was sure to get.  “And,” he added as an afterthought, “your hair _is_ pretty spiky.”

“You’re one to talk,” she shot back.

“Hey!” he said, taking offense.  “My hair is not the issue here.  The issue here is…actually, why are you here?  You never told me.”

Suddenly, Temari’s whole demeanor shifted. She no longer looked angry.  She looked dead serious, even a little scared.  She crossed her arms and closed her eyes as she took a deep breath.  A few seconds after she exhaled, she opened her eyes, and then it was there, plain to see.  The fear.  Something had really shaken Temari, and Shikamaru wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was.  Oh, well.  It’s not like there was really anything he could do to get out of it anyway. 

She fixed him with the penetrating stare she reserved for when she really meant business, took another deep breath, and finally spoke. 

* * *

“We have a major problem,” Temari whispered.  She felt her voice crack and hated it.  She looked weak, she could tell.  She could feel it in her bones, buried deep.  She wanted to purge herself of that weakness, but knew that now was not the time or place. 

She snapped out of her introspection just in time to see Shikamaru reading her face.  He was squinting at her, searching for answers, and apparently he found something because after a few moments he spoke.  “You think there are going to be more attacks.”

It was unnerving how he could do that, just look a person and know exactly what they were thinking.  And she supposed it was invaluable in battle, but it was downright frightening to be on the receiving end.

“Yes,” she confirmed.  “How did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” he said.  “But that was the only thing I could think of that could possibly merit this sort of reaction in you.  You’re about as serious as I’ve ever seen you, and that only ever happens when you think the village is in danger.”  He shrugged somewhat cheekily.  “It’s just logic.”

Temari shook her head.  Unbelievable.  That’s what he was.

She realized he was looking at her expectantly.  “What?” she asked.

“Well, what have you figured out already?”

“Oh!” she breathed, horrified that she’d gotten distracted so easily.  She quickly rattled off all the data Gaara had uncovered, as well as the plan they’d formulated to deal with the threat.  Shikamaru took all the information stoically, giving no indication that he was even hearing the words pouring out of her mouth aside from the subtle back-and-forth movement of his eyes that she knew meant he was working something out in his head, looking for the best options.  As she finished her explanation, he nodded.

“That makes sense,” he conceded.  “I probably would’ve come up with something like that.”

“Yeah, but better, no doubt.”

“Well,” he shrugged, a slightly smug tone slinking into his raspy voice, “I do have an idea…”

“Yeah?”

“You said you wanted to send someone to tell the Hokage about all this in person, right?”

Temari nodded.  “That’s the only way we can really keep things under wraps.  Sending a scroll would be too risky—it’d be too easy to intercept.”

“My thoughts exactly.  And we’ll need to send you, that’s obvious—”

“How is that obvious?  And besides, I can’t go.  The weekend’s almost over and I have to teach on Monday.”

“I’ll Sub for you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?  Don’t forget, I teach at the Leaf Academy sometimes.  Besides, what was your alternative?”

“I thought _you_ would go.”

“I can’t.  That goes against Leaf protocol.  I’m Captain, so I can’t leave my squad by themselves, and _definitely_ not until everyone’s fit to travel.  And Hinata’s leg won’t be healed for a few weeks at least.  Besides, it should be a Sand ninja who tells Tsunade, just from a diplomatic point of view.”

Temari rolled her eyes.  Shikamaru had never really cared for the rules, but he could certainly use them when it suited him.  “Fine,” she sighed.  “I’ll go.”

“Great, but there’s still a problem.  If—no, not if.  _When_ you go, we’ll be running on even less manpower than we already have.  Plus, it’s a six-day round trip on foot.  We can’t risk that.”

Temari furrowed her brow, confused.  “If we can’t risk the six-day trip, then why are we even having this conversation?”

“It’s only six days on foot.  If you go by air, it’s only two.”

“What’re you getting at?  I don’t know anyone who can fly, Nara.”

“No, but I know someone who can.”  He abruptly turned and walked to the other side of the room, leaving Temari gaping, wondering exactly what she was getting herself into.

* * *

Shikamaru marched over to Sai, where he was still leaning against the wall after Temari’s surprise attack.  He took a moment to feel bad for the poor sociopath, but then he was all business.  “Sai, are you healed enough to fly?”

“It will be uncomfortable, Captain, but yes, I believe I can.”

“Excellent,” he said, glancing out the window.  More time had passed than he’d realized.  The sun was well on its way to setting, and there would be no sense in sending them overnight.  Then they’d just be exhausted, and they’d need time on the other end to recover. No.  He’d have to send them in the morning.  “You’re going to fly Temari to the Hidden Leaf, first thing tomorrow morning.  She has an urgent message for Lady Tsunade.  You’ll meet her at the village gate at sunrise.”

Sai bowed his head slightly.  “Yes, Captain.  Is that all?”

“No, actually.  While you’re there, I need you to run a couple errands for me.”

“Errands, Captain?”

“Yeah.  I need you to track down Ino, Kiba, and Shino, and bring them back with you.”

“Of course.”

Shikamaru thought they were through, so he began to pivot in order to return to Temari, but Sai caught him by the shoulder before he could.  Shikamaru could see that Sai was feeling fairly apprehensive, but he wasn’t sure why.

“With all due respect, are you sure this is the best idea, Captain?” Sai asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Sending me with _her_.  I get the feeling she doesn’t like me.  Generally, when a person punches me in the face, it means I’ve called them something insulting and that they hate me.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that it might be safer to _not_ give people nicknames?”

“But I read in a book that—”

“You can’t believe everything you read in books,” he said, glancing over his shoulder where he could see that Temari was still having a bit of trouble controlling her rage.  “And I guess she’s not too keen on you right now,” he admitted, facing Sai once more, “but I’m sure she’ll warm up to you eventually.”

He turned to leave but stopped himself this time.  “But Sai,” he said, “maybe just call her Temari from now on.”

One side of Sai’s mouth twitched slightly, as if he wanted to smile but couldn’t.  He raised one hand to his throat, where Temari had been holding him to the wall.  He brushed his fingers across it lightly, as if remembering the pain.  “Will do,” he said.

* * *

A few moments later, Shikamaru returned to Temari with a rather satisfied look on his face.  “So that’s all set,” he said, clearly intending not to acknowledge anything that had just happened.  Temari wasn’t going to let him do that.

“Him?” she asked.  “You’re sending me with _him_?”

“Yes.  He can get you there and back in two days, along with some extra help I’ve requested.”

“What extra help?”

“There’s no way we can pull this off without some Sensory Type ninja, so I’ve just gotten us some.”

“Your friends?”

“Yep.  The best in the business.”

Temari sighed, resigned now to her fate.  “Alright.  So when do we leave?”

“First thing tomorrow morning.  I told Sai to meet you at the gate at sunrise.”

Temari balked.  “Sunrise?! Dammit, Nara, when am I supposed to sleep?”

Shikamaru shrugged.  “You could always go to bed early.”

He really didn’t seem to understand—Temari.  Does.  Not.  Wake.  Up.  Early.  It simply is not done.  Sleep is sacred.  And Shikamaru was messing with it.  But she also knew that on some level, he was only doing and saying things because they needed to be done and said.  He never did anything for any other reason, so she supposed she had to respect his decisions.  They were for the good of her village, after all.  He didn’t have anything to gain by helping her, but here he was.  He really wasn’t a horrible guy, even if he was stealing her sleep from her.  Somehow, Shikamaru always seemed to get away with anything when it came to her.  He was the only one exempt from her temper.  Despite her outrage, she found herself smiling. 

“What time is it, anyway?” she asked.

They simultaneously turned to look out the window, evaluating the sun’s angle. 

“About four o’clock?” Shikamaru estimated.

“Yeah,” Temari conceded.  “Have we really been talking for that long?”

“Apparently.”

“Hm,” Temari sighed, suddenly remembering how tired she was.  “Well if that’s the case, I’m gonna go take a shower.  I have other peoples’ blood in my hair, and I need to do something about that.”

“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” he said, grinning in that crooked way of his.  Temari made to leave, but then Shikamaru stopped her with a word.  “Temari?” he asked, and she could have sworn he sounded a little nervous. 

“What?” she asked, suddenly on edge.

“It’s just that…I noticed earlier that this apartment only has three bedrooms and, well…”

Temari raised a hand and bonked herself on the forehead.  She was such a moron.  The guest quarters had been built with typical diplomatic squads of three in mind.  The Sand rarely received visitors, so they were ill-prepared, and now—

“There are five of you,” Temari finished for him.

“Yeah.  And Choji already took the couch.”

As if to punctuate the point, Choji, who had been in the kitchen, trudged into the room and plunked onto the couch, putting his hands behind his head and kicking back and looking very, very comfortable.

“So…” Shikamaru hedged, scuffing his foot against the ground.  “Where do I sleep?”

Temari would have thought about it, but there really weren’t any options.  This was one other guest space, but she knew Shikamaru well enough to know he wouldn’t want to stay alone, so there was one other choice.  “I guess you can keep staying at my place,” she offered. 

“Are you sure?” he asked, “’cause I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You were always a burden, but I think I can deal with living with you for a little while longer.”

Shikamaru clapped his hands once, looking very relieved to have a place to sleep.  “Thank you,” he said.

“Shut up.  I’m going home,” Temari muttered, waving him away.  She started walking slowly toward the door, but paused to glance back at him.  “Are you coming, or what?”

Shikamaru instantly leaped into action, racing to Temari’s side.  “Bye, guys,” he said, waving.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Naruto, who was in the kitchen, give Shikamaru a knowing stare.  She didn’t know what to make of it, so she just let it go.

* * *

An hour or so later, Temari and Shikamaru had both taken their turns in the shower, and Shikamaru was feeling considerably better.  The hot water had stung when it ran over his stitches, but it was a good sting.  As the water trickled down his body, it had turned a nasty reddish brown, carrying all the dirt and blood with it down the drain.  His skin now looked impossibly clean, almost as though the battle had never taken place.  He pushed aside the curtain and stepped out of the shower, noticing a set of black sweats on the floor, waiting for him.  Temari had borrowed more of Kankuro’s clothes for him to wear.  That was nice of her, even if they were too big.

He dried off and slipped into the sweats, tightening the drawstring and rolling up the legs, marveling at how soft the fabric was.  He’d forgotten how soft clothes could be—his own clothes had been so caked with dirt that it had been almost like wearing stone.  And speaking of his own clothes…where were they?  He didn’t see them anywhere.  He’d have to ask Temari.  He removed his hair tie from his wrist, where he’d placed it for safekeeping during his shower, and quickly put his hair into his trademark ponytail.  He couldn’t stand walking around with his hair down. 

Dressed, he left the bathroom in search of Temari and found her at the counter in her tiny kitchen, munching on a rice ball.  Her hair, he couldn’t help but notice, was down.  It looked much darker wet, and it hung to just above her shoulders.  She was wearing black shorts and a matching tank top.  _Why does everyone in this village insist on wearing black?_ he asked himself.  _Don’t they know they live in a desert?_

Temari, noticing him for the first time, raised her half-eaten rice ball as a way of greeting.  Her cheeks were stuffed, so talking wasn’t really an option right now.  Shikamaru entered the kitchen and watched in awe as Temari stuffed the remainder of her rice ball into her mouth and swallowed.  It was not a small rice ball. She quickly grabbed another from the plate in front of her.

“Didn’t eat lunch,” she mumbled around another bite of rice.  “Want one?  They’re good.”

Shikamaru graciously picked one from the plate and took a bite.  She was right—they were good.  He polished off that rice ball and, suddenly famished, seized another.   

After a few more bites, he finally remembered that he had a question for her.  “Temari, did you do something with my clothes?  I didn’t see them.”

Her eyes widened in recognition, and she made a small noise in the back of her throat, but that could have meant anything.  Her mouth was too full to speak again.  She swallowed, coughing slightly, but answered.  “Yeah, I gave them to Keiko, our housekeeper.  That’s one of the perks of being the Kazekage’s personal guard—you have someone to do your laundry for you.”

Shikamaru laughed, an easy laugh that bubbled to the surface before he could stop it.  “Sounds nice,” he admitted.

“Oh, it is,” she said, yawning.  She looked absolutely exhausted.  Now that she was clean, the dark circles under her eyes were even more pronounced, and he was sure that his were bad, too.

“I guess neither of us got much sleep last night, eh?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes. 

“I guess not,” Temari responded mildly.

Shikamaru guiltily remembered the way she’d gotten up in the middle of the night to comfort him.  “Sorry ‘bout that, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, stretching her arms out behind her and arching her back.  Shikamaru heard several joints crack and Temari let out a relieved sigh.  “That’s better.  I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Alright.”  Shikamaru watched her walk away, admiring the grace with which she navigated the apartment.  She was crossing the living room when a thought struck him.  “So am I taking the couch tonight?” he inquired, dreading the answer.

Temari snorted good-naturedly.  “You’re kidding, right?  Didn’t you just hear my joints?  I can’t sentence you to that couch, especially with your stitches.  It’s hard and horrible. Sleeping on that is a fate worse than death.  Nah, you can share the bed.”

Shikamaru balked.  “Really?” he asked dubiously.

“Yeah.  It’s a big bed.  You’re not afraid of cooties or anything, are you?” she asked quite seriously.  It took him a beat to realize she was mocking him. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he defended.

“That’s what I thought,” she smirked.  She continued walking to the bedroom.  “You coming?”

 _Bossy woman.  Such a drag._   “Yeah.”

He jogged past the couch and entered Temari’s bedroom, where she was pulling her curtains closed, shutting out the last dregs of orange light from the desert sunset.  They climbed beneath the covers, and Temari was right—there was plenty of room.  Without speaking, they rolled until they were back-to-back, albeit a couple feet apart.  The mattress moved slightly as Temari adjusted her position, and Shikamaru found that it was fairly comforting, sharing a bed with someone.  You could feel their presence, and they affected you just as you affected them.  It created a back-and-forth motion not dissimilar to being rocked to sleep.  The smell he’d noticed the night before was even stronger now, and he was surrounded by the scent of Temari’s shampoo and fabric softener and he felt himself drifting away, feeling that, for once in his life, he wouldn’t have to sleep with one eye open because Temari was there and they would keep each other safe because that’s what friends did.  And they were friends.  Shikamaru knew that with certainty now.

Temari clicked off her lamp and the room was bathed in total darkness.

“G’night,” Shikamaru muttered into his pillow, barely conscious.

“Good night, Nara,” he heard back, just as he slipped into sleep, oblivious to the world.

By the time he woke up the following morning, Temari was already gone, departed with the sunrise.


	5. Doubt

“I'm losing control here.

It's like these thoughts have a mind of their own.

The dam's not gonna hold if I can't

Get a fuckin' grip here.

It's inescapable; maybe I'll drown

In the questions or maybe I'll build

The arc above the sea.”

\--The Venetia Fair, _We Used To Worship the Moon_

* * *

Temari was really fucking tired.  Today was the third long day in what was turning into an unbearably lengthy series of virtually sleepless days, and to be fair, she’d slept far better the previous night than she had in a while, but the fact remained that she’d been awake before the sun was even up.  And to make matters worse, her travel companion was an absolute moron when it came to human interaction.  Temari was getting cranky.  At least the day was almost over. 

She and Sai had arrived in the Hidden Leaf just before sunset and had barely managed to track down Tsunade, who had been finishing up her daily rounds in the hospital.  They’d had to wander the offensively clean hallways for nearly half an hour before they’d found her, because the woman at the information desk had been so deplorably unhelpful.

Temari had just about had it with hospitals.  They pissed her off.

But that’s all done now—they’d delivered the information they’d been asked to deliver, Tsunade had approved their requisition of Ino, Kiba, and Shino, and now she and Sai were wandering aimlessly around the village, looking for things to do for the remaining hours before it would be socially acceptable to go to sleep but too exhausted to actually do much of anything. 

She glanced over at Sai, who’d been boasting a strained fake smile all day, but had now abandoned the façade and was holding his hand to his side.  Temari jerked her head in his general direction.  “You okay?” she asked, not really caring all that much what the answer was but feeling she was obligated to check.

“Oh, yes,” he responded cheerfully, pasting that fake smile back across his pallid face.  “The efforts of the day are just catching up with my injuries, that’s all.  How are you doing?”

Temari shrugged.  “Fine, I guess,” she muttered as her stomach rumbled loudly.  Temari scratched at her head, smiling embarrassedly as a few people on the street turned to find out from where the ungodly noise had emanated. 

Sai chuckled good-naturedly.  “Hungry, then?”  He reached out a hand as if he were about to clap Temari on the shoulder, as one would to a close friend, but then withdrew, as if he’d thought better of the idea.  Temari found herself feeling rather bad—was she really scaring him off that badly?  She supposed she hadn’t been the most amicable of travel companions, but—

No buts.  She’d been downright awful; had hardly spoken to the poor boy all day.  And after all, what had he done to merit such a cold reception?  He’d tried to give her a nickname.  And if what Shikamaru had told her had any ring of truth, he’d just been making a poor attempt at being friendly.  She’d just have to be a bit nicer; Sai deserved to be given a chance. 

“Yeah.  Starved,” she replied, flashing him a toothy grin that she hoped came off as friendly.  “I packed a few rice balls for the trip, but those only last so long, you know?”  She placed a hand on his shoulder just as he’d been about to do to her, and to her great delight, a genuine smile spread across Sai’s face, setting his eyes twinkling.

“In that case, I know the perfect place for dinner.  This way!”

He led her up the street and eventually rounded a corner, stopping abruptly in front of a small shop.  The lantern outside glowed fiercely in the dusky twilight and the salty scent wafting out from behind the curtains made Temari’s mouth water.  The sign read ‘Ichiraku Ramen’.

“A ramen shop?” Temari asked.

“Yes, Naruto swears by it.  He’d die before eating ramen from any other shop,” Sai responds earnestly, pulling back a curtain and gesturing for Temari to enter.  “You like ramen, I presume?”

“Of course,” she replied, entering the shop and taking a seat at the counter. 

A young woman appeared from the back room to give them menus and take their order.  Sai ordered a plain ramen with seaweed; Temari went straight for the ramen with a double-order of BBQ Pork.  She needed to keep her strength up.  The young woman took their menus and retreated into the back room, assuring them that their food would be out shortly. 

A few minutes later, a kind-faced old man emerged with two steaming bowls of ramen and set them on the counter, grinning. 

Sai and Temari plucked their chopsticks from the bowl and chimed, “Thank you!” in unison before digging in. 

As Temari sucked in her first mouthful of noodles, her eyes widened in wonder.  She’d always enjoyed ramen but had not realized until that moment just how delicious it could truly be. 

The old man chuckled at Temari’s presumably ridiculous facial expression.  “You like it?” he asked.

Temari nodded furiously.  “It’s amazing,” she exclaimed, proceeding to shovel the remainder of her ramen into her mouth and slurp up the broth.  “Can I have seconds?” she asked eagerly, holding her bowl out to the old man.

“I’d be offended if you didn’t.”  He winked, taking the bowl from her.  “Did you hear that, Ayame?” he called into the back room. 

“Already on it, Dad,” she responded, emerging with a fresh bowl.  She placed it in front of Temari and fixed her with a penetrating stare.  “I haven’t seen you around here before.  You’re from the Hidden Sand village, right?” she asked, pointing to her headband.

“Yeah,” Temari answered around a mouthful of hot noodles.  “I haven’t been to the Leaf in a while, but the last time I was here, I was helping organize the Chunin Exams.”

“Oh!” the old man exclaimed, snapping his fingers.  “I know exactly who you are.  I remember Shikamaru talking about you a while back.  Your name is…um…Te…don’t tell me.  T—T—Terumi?  No, no, that’s not it.  Uh…but it definitely starts with a ‘T’.  Hmm…Ah!  Temari!  That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Temari said incredulously. 

“Ayame, this is _the_ Troublesome Temari,” he exclaimed, pointing excitedly.  “We’ve heard so much about you!  You’ll have to forgive me for taking so long to remember your name.  I’m getting up there in years and my memory just isn’t what it used to be,” he confessed. 

“What are you talking about?” she inquired in disbelief, choosing to ignore the ‘troublesome’ comment.  “That was impressive.  I never could have done that—I’m the _worst_ with names.”

“I’m sure that’s an exaggeration,” he said, stretching a hand over the counter.  “I’m Teuchi.”

“Teuchi,” she confirmed, shaking the old man’s hand.  “I think I can remember that.”

She withdrew her hand and was about to take another slurp of her noodles, but was suddenly distracted by something she’d heard earlier.  “Wait, did you say that Shikamaru was talking about me?”

“Yep,” answered Ayame frankly.

“What did he say?” Temari asked, failing to mask the curiosity in her voice.

Teuchi laughed.  “Oh, nothing bad, if that’s what you’re thinking.  He complained a bit, but you know how he is—he complains about everything.  I could tell he holds you in high regard.”

Temari nearly snorted, imagining Shikamaru’s lopsided smirk and his often superior attitude.  “What, you think he _respects_ me?” she cackled.  “That’s crazy.”

“No, really,” Teuchi murmured, leaning over the counter as if he were about to confide a vital secret.  “I may just be a humble cook, but I’m a cook in a ninja village, and I’ve had every single person who lives in the Hidden Leaf through my restaurant at some time or another.  Now, these people are highly trained Shinobi; very skilled at deception, very skilled at keeping outsiders from knowing their secrets, their innermost thoughts.  But I’ve been around for a long time, and I’ve gotten really good at reading people who don’t want to be read.  I’ve only ever seen him talk about one other person the way he talked about you, and that was Asuma Sarutobi, bless his soul, and if that doesn’t mean he respects you, I don’t know what would.”

Temari felt a chill as a breeze swept through the restaurant and as she remembered her conversation with Shikamaru from two nights ago, when he’d confessed to her that his sensei had died.  He had loved that man more than anyone—as far as Temari could figure, he was like a second father to Shikamaru, and the hurt from his death was clearly still there, raw and seeping.  She recalled the pained expression on his face when she’d found him puffing away on his cigarette. 

She sighed.  If what the old man was saying had any truth to it, and she had no reason to believe it didn’t, Shikamaru cared a great deal more for her than he’d lead her to believe.  She had a sudden flash of the way he scratched at his head and bit his lip and fiddled with his earrings when his mind was distracted, and presently, the chill was gone; she felt warmed straight through.  The corners of Temari’s mouth quirked into a private smile.  She wondered what Shikamaru was doing at that moment…

* * *

Shikamaru was looking in the refrigerator.  His clothes were stiff with sweat and he was downright starved, but it appeared that Temari had taken the last of the rice balls with her when she’d left that morning.  _Troublesome woman,_ he thought.  Shikamaru sighed and closed the fridge, resigning himself to a hunt through the cupboards for dinner.  

It had been a long, trying day, but he and his comrades had little to show for their efforts.  As it turned out, Shikamaru couldn’t imagine a more horrible situation than wandering aimlessly around an unfamiliar village on a 112 degree day, with absolutely no idea what he was looking for.  Except, perhaps, doing the same thing on a 114 degree day, as was the forecast for the following day.  Although, the next day was Monday, and Shikamaru was expected to sub for Temari at the Academy, so at least he’d get to spend part of his day indoors.  He couldn’t say the same for his squad, but hey—it was out of his hands.

He’d met with Gaara and Kankuro about half an hour after he’d rolled out of bed that morning (and dressed in his own _clean_ clothes, which he’d found neatly folded on the sofa that morning—he had to remember to thank the housekeeper), and they’d decided that it was unlikely that there would be an attack for the next couple days.  If Shikamaru were in the rogue army’s shoes, he would ride out the supposed ‘the-enemy-doesn’t-know-we’re-here’ advantage as long as possible.  That being said, they’d agreed without question, they (including Sai, Temari, Choji, Hinata, and Naruto, and Ino, Kiba, and Shino once they arrived) would need to be on heightened alert and patrol the village at regular intervals, just to be safe.  Besides, Shikamaru didn’t think they would be able to relax for much longer.  If Gaara was right about the army’s ultimate plan, and Shikamaru was certain that he was, the optimal time to strike would be anywhere from two to five days from then—that span of time would be just enough for the village to think the terror was over, thereby creating a heightened emotional impact when they discovered it wasn’t; plus, it would ensure that a great majority of the Hidden Sand’s shinobi would still be in the hospital, unfit to defend the village.

He hated to admit it, but it was an excellent plan.  He’d always despised going up against reasonably intelligent opponents—that meant they were that much more difficult to defeat.  And he always defeated them, ultimately, but he loathed having to put effort into it.

After his meeting, he and Kankuro had headed to his friends’ apartment to inform them of the current situation, as they knew nothing of the rogue army’s plot.  However, when Shikamaru finally told them, none of them appeared to be surprised in the least. 

“Well, you sent Sai off to bring in reinforcements,” Choji had pointed out smugly.  “We figured we’d be sticking around for a while.  Even _Naruto_ figured something was up when we heard about that.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Naruto enthusiastically, but then he processed Choji’s snide comment.  “Hey…”

“Choji, don’t say things like that,” murmured Hinata nervously.

“See?  At least Hinata likes me,” boasted Naruto despondently.

Hinata gasped and curled in on herself, trying to hide in plain sight.  Shikamaru could see the tips of her ears turning bright red. 

“Chill out, guys,” he requested exasperatedly.  “We’ve got a job to do.  So Naruto, I want you and Kankuro to patrol the Northern half of the village.  Choji and I will cover the Southern half.  Gaara’s still got paperwork to do, so he can’t be of much use today, but I’ve promised to keep him updated and he offered to take the night shift.  He said something about being used to going without sleep, so he’d be perfect for the job.  Hinata—I want you to stay here.  We need your leg to heal up a bit more before I send out outside, and anyway, you can probably get more done in a couple hours with your Byakugan from in here than the rest of us will be able to accomplish all day from out there.  Everyone—keep an eye out for anyone exhibiting weird behavior, or anything suspicious about the buildings.  At this point, we don’t really know what we’re looking for; it could be anything, but I’ve been thinking—do you guys remember that old man, Genno?”

Choji and Hinata wrinkled their brows in thought, but Naruto’s unlined face showed instant recollection.  “Of course.  He was nice.  He used to buy me ramen.  He said I reminded him of his Grandson.”

“Yeah.  But do you remember everything else he did?”

“He posed as a construction worker, and he placed a paper bomb network throughout the entire Hidden Leaf Village,” said Hinata softly, finally placing the old man in her memory.

“Exactly,” agreed Shikamaru.  “I’m thinking something similar may be happening here.  Old Man Genno went for decades undetected by working the way he did, and even though the bombs turned out to be duds, it was still a brilliant plan.  I’m sure the enemy hasn’t overlooked that.  So also keep an eye out for construction projects and that sort of thing.”

Naruto raised his hand tentatively, showing a rare moment of restraint and having apparently sensed the gravity of the situation. 

“Yes, Naruto?” Shikamaru asked exasperatedly.

“I should use Shadow Clones, right?  We can cover more ground that way.”

Shikamaru paused for a moment, mulling it over, but came to a conclusion almost instantly.  “No,” he said definitively.  “The whole point of keeping our numbers so limited is to keep from drawing attention to ourselves.  The second people see hundreds of Narutos flooding the streets, our enemy will know the game is up, and then they’ll get desperate, which is exactly what we don’t want.”

“Well I wouldn’t use _hundreds_ ,” Naruto argued.  “But wouldn’t just having a couple help?”

Shikamaru considered the situation.  “I suppose that if you space them out far enough, there wouldn’t be any harm done,” he conceded.  “But I’m limiting you to two, and you have to make sure no one notices you’re using clones.  Can you do that?”

“You can count on me, Shikamaru.”

“Great.  Well, I think that’s everything.  Let’s head out.”

Shikamaru spent the next twelve hours meandering around a too-hot village on a too-impossible mission that he knew was probably doomed to fail, since he was missing his best resources.  But in all likelihood, Temari, Sai, Ino, Kiba, and Shino would arrive sometime the next day, and they’d finally be able to make some progress in their investigation. 

But as of now, Shikamaru was empty-handed, and not to mention hungry.  He finally found some rice and seaweed in the back of one of the cupboards and decided to make some more rice balls.  He put them together quickly, scarfed down five or six (he lost count) and put the rest aside for later. 

No longer hungry, all he really wanted to do was go to bed.  He could already hear Kankuro snoring from behind his closed door.  He went to the bathroom and splashed some water on his face, relishing the coolness.  He fetched the toothbrush from the pile of basic toiletries the housekeeper had been kind enough to give him with his freshly laundered clothes and scrubbed at his teeth, glad that something on his body would feel clean when he went to bed.  He ran a hand over his sleeve and winced when he could feel the salt from his sweat.  There was no way he could wear those filthy clothes in Temari’s bed.  He stripped down to his boxers and simply stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a moment, looking at himself.  His skin above the collar and below the wrists was already a couple shades darker than the rest of him.  He wasn’t used to getting quite this much sun.  But other than that, he looked exactly the same as always.  _Well, not exactly the same_ , he thought, turning to show the mirror his back.  He examined the two rows of inexpert stitches stretching across his shoulder and lower back and was relieved to see that neither of them looked red or infected.  No, they weren’t red, but the black thread was just as harsh as an infection would be.  The blackness made ugly gashes across his otherwise unblemished back, and he knew he was going to wind up with nasty scars, and despite it all, Shikamaru smiled.  The battle had left its mark on him.  He didn’t know the full extent of it, but the battle was important—not just to the Hidden Sand, but to him.  He couldn’t quite explain it, but he knew that in the end, everything would be clear.

It was with that thought that he wandered to Temari’s bedroom and crawled between her uniquely scented sheets.  He remembered the previous night, when the two of them had drifted off into sleep side-by-side, and he found that tonight, the bed felt oddly empty.  Without her weight balancing out his own, the bed simply didn’t feel right.  Shikamaru felt himself missing Temari, even with all her troublesome nagging and candidness.  He hoped she was doing alright in the Leaf, that her mission had gone as planned, and he hoped even more that she’d be back tomorrow, which was yet another thing he couldn’t explain.  Somewhere in the past two days, they’d become friends.  Not just grudging acquaintances or people who saved each other’s asses when the situation called for it.  Actual friends.

Shikamaru allowed himself a small smile and muttered, “Goodnight, Temari,” into his pillow as he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

“Bye, Teuchi.  Thanks for everything,” Temari gushed, shaking the old man’s hand.

“No problem,” he replied.  “Make sure you stop by next time you’re in the village.”

Temari smiled.  “I will,” she agreed as she walked away, following Sai into the scarcely-lit maze of streets which filled the Hidden Leaf at night.

Having finally had their fill of ramen, Sai had footed the bill and he and Temari left Ichiraku in good spirits.  Sai was looking as happy as Temari had ever seen him, his eyes squinted up at the corners and betraying his feelings even if he wasn’t smiling. 

Temari marveled for a moment at how peaceful the Hidden Leaf seemed at night.  For such a lively village, it was sort of beautiful in the moonlight.  Temari took a lungful of the cool air and she smiled when it didn’t smell like the desert.

“What would you like to do now?” asked Sai in an attempt to be chivalrous.  Temari knew he was exhausted and that his cracked rib must be causing him a great deal of discomfort. 

“It’s getting late,” Temari said, partly out of pity and partly because she desperately wanted to get some sleep.  “I think we should just call it a night.”

They continued walking, but after a few steps, Temari realized something.  “I need to find a place to stay,” she said abruptly.  “Are there any hotels nearby?  Anywhere I could spend the night?”

Sai turned to her and quirked the corners of his mouth up ever so slightly.  “Don’t be silly,” he chided.  “You can stay with me.”

Temari was a bit taken aback.  She’d never anticipated that Sai would warm up to her this much.  “Um…thanks.  That’d be great.”

Sai nodded seriously.  “I hope you will find it comfortable.”

They walked for several more blocks in silence, until they reached a plain-looking multi-story complex.  Sai stepped through the front door and beckoned for Temari to follow.  They walked up several flights of stairs and finally stopped at a landing that looked very much like the other ones.  Sai made his way down a dark hallway and stopped at the third door before entering the apartment. 

The first thing that struck Temari was how sparsely furnished the little space was.  It was a three-room apartment.  The central space was a living room/kitchen and that branched out to two more rooms, which Temari observed were a bathroom and a bedroom.  The only pieces of furniture she could see in the apartment were a futon, a small coffee table, a tall bookshelf, Sai’s bed, and a desk placed under the window.  The desk was littered with ink-splattered pages and Temari could imagine sitting there and feeling the sunlight on her face while she worked.

The second thing that struck her was that the walls were covered in paintings.  They were beautiful, she thought.  She stopped in front of one, an abstract with swirls in green and blue and orange and pointed.  “Did you paint all these?”

“Yes,” he replied.  “I find that creating art helps me greatly with performing my jutsu.”

“Yes, of course,” Temari said, silently admonishing herself for forgetting.  She had flown here on a giant ink bird, after all.  “You’re a great painter,” she marveled, slowly making a circuit of the room.  She paused in front of another painting, for which the title plate read _Tree in Spring_.  She paused, confused, and looked back to the previous painting, for which the title plate was blank.  “How come some of them have titles and some don’t?”

Sai tilted his head as if remembering.  “I used to create art out of necessity, not because I enjoyed it.  I gave none of my early works titles because I felt nothing as I created them; nothing came to mind.  I was trained to suppress any emotions that emerged through my work.  Naruto and Sakura were the ones who encouraged me to feel those emotions, to let them out.  And so my recent works have titles, based on my thoughts and feelings while creating the piece.”

“All thanks to Naruto, huh?” Temari asked, only half kidding.

“Yes,” Sai acknowledged, walking into his bedroom.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Temari admitted.  “Naruto’s done a lot for a lot of people.  He’s a good guy.  And not just one of those guys who does good things for recognition.  You look at him, and you know he’s good right down to the core.  I wish there were more people like that.”

Temari meandered slowly over to Sai’s room and leaned against the doorframe, looking down at her feet.  “If only everyone could be like that, right?” she laughed sardonically.  “Maybe then my village wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Don’t worry, Temari,” Sai intoned.  “If I know my squad, they will stop at nothing to save your village.  You can count on that.”

A smirk stretched across Temari’s face.  “So you decided to drop the nickname, I see.”

“Shikamaru decided that might be for the best,” Sai said matter-of-factly.

“Smart man,” said Temari, finally looking up. 

Sai’s room looked very different than she’d expected it to look.  It was just as sparsely furnished as the rest of the apartment, and the walls still boasted Sai’s art, but these were different.  They were all portraits.  As Temari spun in a slow circle, she took in all of them.  She saw many familiar faces, including most of the Leaf ninja from the Chunin Exams.  Kakashi was there, as well as a couple other Senseis.  Temari even recognized that Sasuke brat who went rogue all those years ago.  But the thing that really blew her away was that the wall opposite Sai’s bed was entirely covered in paintings of Naruto.  His yellow hair, twinkling blue eyes, and sparkling teeth peered out from every canvas.

Seeing Temari’s amazed expression, Sai endeavored to explain.  “When I go to sleep, I like to be surrounded by my…friends.”  He struggled with the word, like it was unfamiliar to him.  “It’s new to me, having people like these in my life, and I like being surrounded by these reminders.  With these, I know they exist.”

“Whoa,” Temari breathed, eyes still fixed on the wall opposite Sai’s bed.  “That is a lot of Narutos.”

“Yes,” Sai acknowledged.

“I mean, you’ve really spent a lot of time on these.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love with him.”  Temari looked at Sai, grinning, but her cheery expression quickly vanished when she saw the tortured expression on Sai’s face. 

“Oh my god,” Temari whispered.  “You _are_ in love with him, aren’t you?”

Sai’s face quickly reverted to his typical stoicism.  “I would not know.”

Temari glanced at him quizzically.  “How can you possibly not know if you’re in love with somebody?”

Sai’s brow wrinkled in thought.  “I have never experienced love for another person.  All that I know on the subject is what I’ve read in books.”

“But how can you not know if you’re in love?”

“How would I know?  What are the indicating factors?” asked Sai with a genuine curiosity.

“I—I—” Temari stuttered.  “I mean—you should just… _know_.  Right?  I mean, that’s how it’s always seemed.”

“Seemed?” Sai repeated.  “Then you have never been in love yourself?”

“As _if_ ,” Temari scoffed.  “That would involve a guy being able to talk to me for more than a couple minutes before running off.”

Sai tilted his head inquisitively.  “Why do they run?”

Temari sighed.  “I don’t know.  I guess I scare them off.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!  I don’t do it on purpose!” she exploded, the frustration coursing angrily through her body like blood.  She was breathing hard and her heart was pounding against the inside of her chest.  She supposed that _this_ was actually a good example of why guys ran off.  Why was she such a perpetually angry person?  She didn’t _enjoy_ being this way, didn’t like surrendering to her rage or feeling like a bomb ticking, but she gets asked a couple personal questions, and BOOM!  She kept telling herself to get a handle on her anger, but she was having trouble with doing that, especially in the past couple days.  First the battle, which was a complete bloodbath, then her disagreement with Kankuro’s doctor, and not to mention her attempt to strangle Sai the previous day.  She was a pacifist, for crying out loud!  She hated fighting!  She hated what it did to people, what it did to _her_.  She would have to stop these outbursts sometime soon, or else—

“Perhaps you do,” said Sai, breaking into her thoughts.

“What?”

“You could be scaring them off on purpose.”

Temari widened her eyes at him, bewildered.  “And why would I do that?”

Sai shrugged, wincing as he tweaked one of his cracked ribs.  “Perhaps you are already in love with someone else and haven’t yet realized it.  That is frequently the case in the books I read.”

Temari let out one great, honking laugh before regaining composure.  “What kind of trash are you reading?”

Sai quickly made his way over to his bookshelf and extracted a volume.  He returned to Temari and held the book out to her.  It was a garish shade of orange and the cover was emblazoned with the words ‘Make-Out Paradise’.  She plucked it from his hands and looked it over once before shoving it back into his hands, snickering. 

“You shouldn’t believe all the crap you read in these romance novels,” she said.  “They’re not realistic.  They’re just gonna give you a false idea of reality.  And why are we talking about me, anyway?  We were talking about you, and Naruto.”

Sai silently walked back to the bookshelf and replaced _Make-Out Paradise_ carefully.  He turned to face Temari, a helpless gleam in his eyes.

“Do you think you might love him?” asked Temari.

Sai sighed.  “I really do not know.  All I know is that it makes me happy to be with him.  He makes me better than I really am, and I can feel it.  Here,” he said, pointing to his chest.  “I feel warm when I am with him.  Like his smile gets inside me.”

Temari smiled sadly.  “Sounds like love to me.  You’ve got a rough ride ahead of you, buddy.”

Sai nodded his head solemnly.  “I know.  But the ride will be worth it.”

They stood together in silence for a few moments, bound by their thoughts, but finally, Temari broke the silence. 

“I’m exhausted,” she said.  “We should probably get to bed.”

“Yes,” Sai said abruptly, as if the same thought had just occurred to him.  “I thought you would be comfortable on the futon.  There are sheets in that cupboard,” he said, pointing. 

Temari nodded.  “Thanks.” 

“Of course.”

“Good night, Sai,” she called over her shoulder as she walked to the cupboard.

“Good night, Temari,” Sai replied.  He turned to re-enter his bedroom, but stopped in the doorway.  “Temari?” he asked, as if preparing himself to say something.

“Yeah?”

“I know you think you scare people away, but you don’t scare me,” he said very seriously.  “And you don’t scare Shikamaru either.”

After that, he closed the door very deliberately, leaving Temari to her own devices to figure out what, exactly, he was implying.

* * *

Monday morning arrived with a vengeance, the hot desert sun seeping through the crack between the curtains and cutting a harsh line across the otherwise dark room.  Shikamaru’s internal clock was being just as ruthless as ever, and he awoke just before Temari’s alarm clock went off. 

“Will you get that, Temari?” he slurred, head still heavy with sleep.  It took him a few seconds to remember that Temari wasn’t there, and then he felt the same bizarre loneliness he’d experienced the previous night. 

He lay in bed for a few moments, willing the alarm to shut off by itself, but he’d never had much luck with that sort of thing.  He finally rolled out of bed and trudged to the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face to jerk him into the waking world.  Upon returning to his bedroom, he found his freshly laundered clothes and put them on, reminding himself again to thank the housekeeper.

He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal, seating himself at the tiny dining room table and lazily munching on his breakfast.  After about five minutes, Kankuro emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam.  He had a towel slung precariously around his hips and his hair was dripping steadily on the stone floor.  He yawned exaggeratedly, raising a hand to cover his mouth.  As he closed his mouth, he blinked forcefully and whipped his head back and forth, trying to shake himself awake and sending water flying everywhere in the process.   

“It’s way too early to be up,” Kankuro complained.

“Don’t you have to do this like, every day?” Shikamaru asked.

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t make it any less brutal,” he replied.  “So you’re subbing for Temari at the Academy today, right?”

“That’s what we agreed on before she left.  That’ll be fine, right?”

“Should be, yeah.  And I’ve got something planned anyway.  I figured we could give Temari’s class a little bit of a field trip today, you know?  Try to take some pressure off you and give the kids a little bit of fun at the same time.”

Shikamaru nodded solemnly.  “Sounds like a plan.”

Kankuro turned away and began walking slowly to his room.  “Temari cares about these kids so much,” he called over his shoulder.  “I swear, if anyone besides you had ever suggested that she take a day off, she’d have killed them.”  He chuckled sardonically.  “I’ve told her a couple times to take a mental health day, or something—”

“And what happened?” Shikamaru asked.

“I don’t remember very well.  I’m pretty sure she knocked me out.”  He sighed, pausing just outside his room.  “She hates listening to me.  I’d always sort of thought it was an age thing, like she didn’t want to take advice from her little brother, but she listens to you, and you’re even younger than me.  Well, maybe she just cares more about you,” he explained nonchalantly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shikamaru demanded incredulously.

Kankuro didn’t answer for several seconds, and when he finally spoke again, it wasn’t to address Shikamaru’s question.

“We’ll head out for the Academy in ten minutes,” he said, slipping through the door and clicking it shut behind him.

* * *

The mornings were milder in the Hidden Leaf than they were in the Hidden Sand.  So much so, in fact, that Temari was sincerely regretting having to leave, but she knew she had to.  She had her own village to think about.  She glanced over her shoulder and watched as the Hidden Leaf shrank into little more than a speck on the horizon, a dot of green in the clear blue of the morning sky.

She returned to her original position, face defiantly pointed straight into the wind.  The sharpness of the air stung as it nipped at her skin, and her eyes watered uncomfortably, but it was a good sort of discomfort.  It was the sort that reminded Temari she was alive.

“Yo, Temari!” she heard from her right.  She glanced over and saw Kiba with his long arms wrapped tightly around the neck of his ink bird.  His eyes were wide with a strange mixture of adrenaline and fear, and his teeth were clenched.  “Nobody said there’d be flying involved when they brought me into this!”

Temari smirked.  “What, are you afraid of heights or something?”

Kiba blanched and his features assumed a more defensive appearance.  “No!” he shouted.  “I’m just worried about Akamaru!” he explained, momentarily extricating one arm from his vice-like grip on the bird to point to his dog.  Akamaru was perched on the bird directly behind Kiba, and although his claws were digging into the bird like he was hanging on for dear life, Akamaru’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth and his cheeks were flapping in the wind.  The gigantic dog seemed to be having the time of his life. 

Temari turned back to Kiba.  “Yeah, he looks really terrified,” she responded, raising one eyebrow to highlight her sarcasm.

“Kiba,” came a raspy voice from her left.  Shino.  “You know, if you’re scared, you should let someone know.  That’s because if you explain yourself, we might be able to work out a compromise and—”

“Shut the fuck up, Shino!  What the hell do you know, anyway?” came the slightly panicked reply.  “I don’t need any of your shit right now!”

“Man, Kiba, I never knew you were this much of a pussy!” came Ino’s twinkly chatter from the rear of their formation.  She was standing atop the bird with her arms held straight out at her sides, like she was surfing.  Her blonde ponytail was whipping back and forth as they flew, and her smile was so wide that Temari thought it must hurt to keep one’s face like that.  Ino laughed at the look of absolute horror on Kiba’s face.  “Sai,” she called to the front of the formation.  “I wanna do another loop!”

Sai nodded, grinning ever-so-slighlty, and made a hand sign.  Ino’s bird immediately changed course, soaring straight up into the air and taking Ino with it into a backflip.  Ino whooped loudly as the bird reached the apex of the loop, and Kiba’s terrified expression only intensified. 

“Ino, quit it!  _YOU’RE GONNA KILL YOURSELF_!”

She giggled as she caught up with the group once more.  “Kiba, you need to get that stick removed from your ass.  You’re no fun at all today.”

“Kiba, you really have nothing to be afraid of.  That’s because you can simply channel your chakra into your feet to keep your balance, just like climbing a tree—”

“ _SERIOUSLY SHINO, SHUT THE FUCK UP_.”

Temari shot a sideways glance at the hooded shinobi.  Shino’s face was as solemn as ever, but Temari thought she saw the ghost of a smile on his face.  “So this guy’s your best friend, huh?” she asked.

“Yes,” Shino replied.  “Ever since we were children.”

“And you’re gonna take that abuse?”

“I am used to people not listening to what I have to say.”

Temari’s brow furrowed.  “That sucks, man.  Why don’t they listen, if you don’t mind me asking?”

The ghost of a smile disappeared entirely as Shino opened his mouth to speak.  “It’s the curse of the Aburame clan,” he explained.  “It’s because we specialize in insects.  We become flies on the wall, and people often forget about us.”

Temari snorted derisively.

Shino turned to her in a rare display of outward confusion.  “What?” he asked.

Temari shook her head.  “You think people forget about you?  You should see the impact you made on my brother.  Do you remember when you beat the crap out of Kankuro?  I’ve been meaning to thank you for that—he needed some sense knocked into him, the cocky bastard.  But trust me, he hasn’t forgotten you.  In fact, he’s wanted a rematch for like, three years.  So don’t be surprised if he wants to fight you the second we arrive.”

Shino turned his face back into the wind, an odd look of satisfaction on his face.  “I may have to take him up on that offer.”

Temari rolled her eyes.  “You men are all the same.  You always want to fight.”

“And you don’t?”

Temari turned away from Shino.  “No,” she murmured so quietly she could hardly hear herself.  “But sometimes I can’t stop myself.”

“ _HEY_ ,” shouted Kiba over the wind.  “ _I HATE TO BREAK UP THIS LITTLE SAP-FEST, BUT CAN WE PLEASE GET MOVING?!  I’D LIKE TO LAND SOON._ ”

“Kiba, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were afraid of heights,” Ino taunted, still surfing the air currents.

“ ** _I AM NOT AFRAID OF HEIGHTS I AM JUST CONCERNED FOR AKAMARU’S SAFETY_** ,” Kiba shouted, completely abandoning conventional verbal punctuation.

“Oh, Kiba’s such a little scaredy-cat.  I didn’t think that was even paw-ssible,” Ino joked.

“ ** _STOP WITH THE FUCKING ANIMAL PUNS YOU KNOW VERY WELL I’M A DOG HANDLER SO I WON’T HAVE ANY OF THAT CAT SHIT CAN WE PLEASE JUST SPEED UP I DON’T WANT AKAMARU ON THAT DAMN BIRD ALL DAY_**.”

“We are already going the top speed,” Sai called back to him.

“ ** _WELL HOW LONG IS IT GOING TO TAKE?_** ”

“Approximately three more hours,” Sai responded nonchalantly.

“ ** _I SWEAR TO GOD WHEN I SEE SHIKAMARU I WILL FUCKING KILL HIM FOR DRAGGING ME INTO THIS THAT SON OF A BITCH IS DEAD FUCKING MEAT YOU HEAR ME DEAD FUCKING MEAT_**.”

* * *

Shikamaru and Kankuro left the apartment and began to make their way across the village to the Ninja Academy.  The day was already shaping up to be even hotter than the previous one, and Shikamaru was extremely grateful that he would be spending the day indoors.  He couldn’t say the same for his friends, but _someone_ had to be on patrol.  True, they weren’t expecting any sort of attack for another few days at least, but reconnaissance was always a good thing.  There was no such thing as too much information.

Shikamaru and Kankuro walked in silence for a few minutes, but before long, Shikamaru felt himself bubbling over with questions. 

“What did you mean, earlier?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“About Temari.”

“Oh,” he said, gritting his teeth and not providing any information.

Shikamaru looked at him imploringly.  “You said she cared about me.”

Kankuro sighed.  “Look, man,” he said.  “This has nothing to do with my sister; it’s just me complaining.  But a few years ago, after the Chunin Exams?  After you had all but beaten her and then decided to forfeit?  You humiliated her.  She wanted to kill you.  And that’s not a metaphor—she told me once that she had a dream about decapitating you and carrying your severed head around on the point of a spear.”

Shikamaru grimaced.  “Nice.”

“Yeah,” Kankuro chuckled.  “And I don’t know when that changed, exactly.  I guess after we all fought the Sound Ninja, she felt like you two were even and she dropped the grudge, but that just doesn’t happen with my sister.  I’ve known her for eighteen years, and once you’re on her bad side, you never leave.  And all it takes to get on her bad side is some tiny, trivial thing—I should know.  I stole four of her kunai knives when I was six, and I know my sister loves me and all that sappy sibling-y shit, but she hasn’t allowed me near her Ninja Tools since.  And it’s been _twelve years._ If there’s one thing my sister can do, it’s hold a grudge.”  He paused for breath, giving Shikamaru a chance to interject.

“But not against me?” he asked.

“Looks that way,” he agreed.  “There’s something different about you.  I think it’s just that you’re smarter than her.  She’s always been the one the Council turns to when they need a strategist, so she’s used to being the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if she’s a knife, you’re a fucking chainsaw, man.  She respects you.”

Shikamaru arched an eyebrow.  “Really?”  In his mind’s eye, he saw Temari as she was three years ago, after the failed Sasuke Rescue mission.  He saw her lip curl in disgust as he broke down in tears and promised that he’d never let his comrades get hurt again.  She despised his weakness—not just the fact that he’d failed his mission, but also the fact that he had the audacity to cry about it.  She certainly didn’t respect him then, and he wasn’t convinced she did now.  He recalled the unguarded twinkle in Temari’s eyes from the previous night as she carelessly stuffed her cheeks full of rice balls.  She’d been wearing her pajamas and her hair had been down.  Shikamaru’s lip twitched up slightly at the contrast between Temari then and now.  He was pretty sure they’d altogether skipped the ‘respect’ stage.  What they had now was more personal, more familiar than respect.  He wasn’t quite sure what to call it; they weren’t exactly _friends,_ per se, but no other word seemed to fit.  “It doesn’t feel like respect,” he muttered to Kankuro, effectively ending the conversation.

They arrived at the Academy and Kankuro ushered Shikamaru to Temari’s usual classroom.  They entered, somehow explained to the tiny children that Temari-sensei was away on a mission at the moment without being too specific, and then Kankuro asked whether they’d like to make their way to the older kids’ class and watch their skills tests.  The children all nodded eagerly and they marched in a disorderly fashion toward the training pitch, where they _ooh_ ed and _aah_ ed at the elaborate setup of targets they saw.

Kankuro’s older students arrived shortly and he waved all the kids into their seats.  They huddled together, whispering excitedly, and Shikamaru smiled when he found Yumi, the little girl from a couple days ago, in the audience, sucking her thumb with her brown eyes wide with wonder.

“Are you ready?” Kankuro muttered in Shikamaru’s ear. 

“For what?”

“I need a witness.  You’re about to help me settle a bet,” Kankuro responded cryptically.  He turned to his class and raised his right hand in the air, an instant hush falling over the crowd.

“Welcome, one and all, to this year’s third quarterly skills test!” Kankuro boomed, instantly adopting the persona of a circus ringleader.  He could have been an actor, Shikamaru thought.  He knew how to work an audience.

“So are you guys ready?” shouted Kankuro animatedly.

“Yes, Sensei!” came the unanimous reply.

“You all remember the drill, right?  You get one try—and one try only—to hit as many of those targets as you can,” he explained, gesturing to the practice field.  “Your score will help determine your class rank, which will in turn determine your squad assignments for when you finally make Genin.  So remember, you just need to do your best, okay?”

“Yes, Sensei!”

“And don’t forget—I’ve got a friend here from the Hidden Leaf Village”—he pointed at Shikamaru, who bowed his head embarrassedly—“and we can’t let him walk away from here thinking our Sand Shinobi-in-Training are a bunch of sissies, can we?”

“No, Sensei!”

“That’s what I thought.  Alright, let’s get started.  Hiroki, you’re up first.”

Shikamaru’s head jerked up at the sound of the familiar name.  He scanned the crowd of children until his eyes found a slight, black-haired boy making his way to the practice field.  The boy from the marketplace, Yumi’s older brother.  In a sudden flash, he remembered the bet Kankuro had made with the boy based on this test—if he got a perfect score, the boy would get to go out to dinner with Temari. 

Now Shikamaru understood Kankuro’s cryptic introduction from earlier, about needing a witness.  Knowing Temari, if Kankuro told her that Hiroki had won the bet, she’d get angry and refuse, and probably accuse Kankuro of lying about Hiroki’s test results to piss her off.  She’d write it off as some sort of sibling prank.  But if Shikamaru could confirm the results…

Well, she’d still be pissed, and it would be a total pain having to tell her, but she’d believe it.  Eventually.

Hiroki walked purposefully toward the center of the range of targets and turned in a slow circle, making a mental note of the exact location of each of the ten targets he was expected to hit.  He reached into his pouch and pulled out a large handful of shuriken, widening his stance and bending his knees.  He looked momentarily over his shoulder to glare at Shikamaru through narrowed eyes for a few more seconds, and then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and leapt into the air, flinging shuriken in every direction.  There were several dull thudding noises and the students cheered.  Hiroki landed lightly on the ground and turned in another slow circle, calculating his results.

He’d hit every last target. 

Shikamaru had expected him to taunt or brag, but Hiroki’s face at that moment broke into such a pure, childlike expression of unwavering happiness that Shikamaru found it difficult not to share in the boy’s joy.  Hiroki sprinted over to Kankuro to receive a well-earned high five and soon returned to his seat, where his classmates all took turns clapping him on the back. 

“Excellent, Hiroki,” Kankuro shouted before pivoting to face Shikamaru.  “So what do you think, Mr. Leaf Village?  Impressed?”

Shikamaru forced himself into the easygoing, encouraging personality he always tried to adopt in front of kids.  “I’ve got to make sure to send the Hokage a letter telling her we’ve got to step our Academy up a notch, if we’re gonna keep up with you guys.”

“Damn straight,” Kankuro replied, causing several of the kids to crack guilty smiles, as if they were embarrassed by the curse word but still found it funny.  “Now, are you guys gonna let Hiroki upstage you?” he continued.

“No, Sensei!”

“That’s what I thought!  Alright, Kirin, you’re up next.  Do us proud.”

A jaunty sandy-haired girl skipped onto the practice field and took up her stance.  While she got ready, Kankuro sidled up to Shikamaru and muttered, “So it looks like you’ve got a date.”

Shikamaru blanched.  “What?”

“With Temari and Hiroki—GOOD JOB, KIRIN!  NOW IT’S YOUR TURN, SAYU!—Sorry dude, I’ve got to at least pretend I’m paying attention to my kids.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  There’s no way Temari’s going on a date with a little kid without a wingman.”

“Is that what I am?  A wingman?”

Kankuro shrugged.  “Well what else would you be?”

Shikamaru looked away, unsure how exactly to answer the question.  “I don’t know.”

“Well Hiroki’s gonna be a right pain in the ass ‘til I tell him when his date is—THAT’S OKAY SAYU, BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME.  YOU’RE UP, HARU.—so what should I tell him?  Is Wednesday good?”

Shikamaru thought for a moment.  “Yeah, it should be.  Then everyone’ll have a day to recover from flying here before they have to cover for us.  And besides, we’re not gonna be much help anyway once the others get here.  There’s no way strategists like me or fighters like you can beat—”

“ALL RIGHT, HARU.  ISHIYAMA, YOU’RE NEXT.  Sorry man, you were saying…”

Shikamaru chuckled.  “I was saying there’s no way to beat Hinata, Kiba, and Shino in a game of hide-and-seek, and that’s really all this is.  Once we have our sensory ninja, then this hunt for these bastards really begins.”

“So when are they supposed to get here?”

Shikamaru glanced at the clock.  “If they left as early as I hope they did, they should be here by the time school lets out.”

Kankuro’s face morphed into an expectant smile.  “Excellent.”

Shikamaru arched a single eyebrow.  “What’s excellent?”

“Ino’s coming,” Kankuro replied deviously.  “It’s time to put my game face on—ISHIYAMA, I KEEP TELLING YOU STUFF LIKE THIS’LL HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T PRACTICE.  GO SIT DOWN.  CHIHIRO, I HOPE YOU DO BETTER THAN THAT—You don’t mind if I…y’know…”

“What, ask her out?” Shikamaru asked.  “Why would I mind?”

Kankuro shrugged embarrassedly.  “I just thought that, well…you do spend a lot of time together.”

Shikamaru sighed.  “Didn’t we just go through this a couple days ago?  Of course I spend a lot of time with her.  She’s on my squad.  She’s my friend.  But she’s like my sister.”  Shikamaru turned away and considered leaving it at that, but then he was grabbed by a sudden burst of curiosity.  “How come I’m always the one people think is with Ino?  What about Choji?  He spends just as much time with her as I do; probably more, actually, now that Tsunade’s been working me so hard.  How come people never ask about him when stuff like this happens?”

“WELL DONE, CHIHIRO.  NOW YOU, MASAKO,” he shouted.  “Well, I can’t think of any way to say this politely, so I’ll just say it.  Choji is fat and kind of unattractive.  I’m pretty sure people just figure if a girl’s gotta choose, she’ll pick you.”

Shikamaru shook his head in dismay.  “People are fucked up, man,” he murmured.  “Choji’s a better guy than I’ll ever be.”

“Dude, don’t undersell yourself.  You’re a good guy.”

Shikamaru snorted.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Kankuro snapped.  “You didn’t have to help us catch these terrorists.  What was your mission, again?  You were just supposed to help us win the battle, right?  But that’s not all you did.  You did the right thing; you stayed.  You’re helping us see this thing through.”

Shikamaru stared down at the ground, wishing Kankuro would just shut up.  “I stayed because of Hinata’s injury.  It had nothing to do with right or wrong.  It was just the logical thing to do.”

Kankuro smiled cryptically.  “You may fool other people with that, you might have convinced everyone else you’re a brain without a heart, but you can’t fool me.  I’ve spent too much time with my sister for something like that to work on me—THAT’S OKAY MASAKO, THAT’S STILL BETTER THAN LAST TIME; IT’S THE IMPROVEMENT THAT COUNTS.  RIN, IT’S YOUR TURN—You guys are more alike than you know; Temari does exactly the same thing as you.  She pretends she does things because they’re the smart thing to do, but she’s just as crazy, just as fucked up, just as… _emotional_ as the rest of us.”  Kankuro turned his head to stare straight into Shikamaru’s eyes.  “She told me about your sensei,” he admitted.  “And you can’t tell me that didn’t hurt.  You can’t tell me you didn’t think with your heart after that happened.  No one can survive by just listening to their head for very long.  At some point, the heart always becomes involved.  It’s only a matter of time.” 

With that, he patted Shikamaru lightly on his uninjured shoulder and stood to address his class.  Shikamaru took another longing glance at the clock.  Three more hours until school was over.  Three more hours until his friends arrived.

Three more hours until the fun could really begin.


End file.
